Review Summary: Emmylou turns up the attitude in this hit-or-miss collection
Opener Driving Wheel is probably one of the more effective ways to set a listener up for disappointment, entirely because it’s the greatest song that Emmylou Harris had released in over 3 years and 3 albums. One gets the sense that it was a conscious attempt to step away from the milquetoast weepiness of her previous two outings, and it’s an attempt that knocks it out of the park. Emmylou’s got more grit in her delivery than she’d ever shown up to that point in her career, and wouldn’t show again until Wrecking Ball a decade later. The instrumentation is likewise rawer, more rocking and exuberant than had been heard on an Emmylou album in years. In short, it’s a powerhouse of a track, and among her best. If only that momentum had been carried through to the rest of the album.
Going into this album, I had hopes that Driving Wheel was setting the stage for something great, a turn to a new, grittier outlook for Harris. And in places she does deliver, just never to the degree promised by Driving Wheel. It’s Only Rock & Roll in particular reaches for the attitude and grit promised by Driving Wheel with a hard-edged rocker that just doesn’t really reach any higher than being a polished piece of driving country-rock. The title track, despite its absolutely vapid lyrics, also features a typically strong vocal performance that gives more hints that Emmylou was experimenting with a slightly more rasping, confrontational vocal style. But in large part, despite the usual great vocal performances, most of the rest of the album never really rises above mediocrity. A weak-ass cover of Diamonds are a Girl’s Best Friend is perhaps the low point, with Emmylou’s voice being covered with a subtle, but off-putting vocal effect and a spoken-word verse that doesn’t do any services to her vocal style. Most of the rest of the album is mired in 80s ballad tropes, which, although not the disaster it sounds like, left me missing the authenticity of her best work.
The most succinct way to sum up White Shoes might be to say that there are signs of life in the slick, commercial sound Emmylou is working with on this album, particularly in the crunchy, muscular instrumentation and the newfound sense of swagger in her delivery, but overall the experience is mired by halfhearted stabs at commercial appeal and mediocre song selection. But the sins of White Shoes are ultimately minor compared with the blunder that was Evangeline, and the tracks that do shine are more worth the listener’s time than nearly all of her previous 2 albums. White Shoes may not have been a recovery for Emmylou Harris, but it was certainly a step in the right direction.
