The creative renaissance of Emmylou Harris shows no sign of abating. This year has seen the release of another strong, powerful album, Stumble Into Grace, while her Spyboy band is becoming the ideal vehicle for pursuing the tributaries of her music as they wind their way through rock, funk and ambient music, while remaining grounded in country and gospel. Having the versatile Buddy Miller alongside her, hooked up with a rhythm section that can play like Herbie Hancock's Headhunters, has exerted a galvanising effect on her live performances.
Though she can kick off her shoes and rock it up in the blink of an eye, as she did in Wheels and Born to Run, at the heart of her work is a powerful undercurrent of tragedy and loss. Who knows to what extent this material is rooted in personal experience, but she does a powerfully affecting job of playing the bereft and abandoned lover. The narrator of I Will Dream, whoever she is, is trying to turn back time by sheer force of imagination (even though "you say you do not love me and your dreams are never of me"). In Here I Am, Emmylou presents herself as an implacable icon of constancy, refusing to let rivers, canyons or time itself stand between herself and the elusive object of her desire.
Not that she merely sings about inner states of mind. Lost Unto This World is a piteous epitaph for abused and murdered women, while Time in Babylon is a caustic survey of a society losing its grip on reality ("everybody must get cloned"). But always, Harris uses traditional music as her touchstone and yardstick. Thoroughbred country songs like Gram Parsons's Hickory Wind, or Townes van Zandt's Poncho & Lefty, pepper the set, while her band downed tools for a stirring a capella performance of the spiritual, Calling My Children Home. A serene version of Boulder to Birmingham recalled the heyday of Emmylou mark one. Her only false step was singing John Lennon's Imagine for an encore, a bizarre lapse into cliche for a usually sure-footed picker of her material.
· At Bridgewater Hall, Manchester tonight (box office: 0161-907 9000). Then touring.
