Joe Henry: Scar : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

On Scar, Joe Henry makes lounge music that sounds like it should've come from the decaying slums of some Eastern European dictatorship during the last days of the Cold War. What's frustrating is that much of the instrumentation here is more engaging than the songs; Scar's parts add up to more than its whole. Guitarist Marc Ribot provides some quietly majestic playing throughout, and there is an inspired sax solo from guest Ornette Coleman on the opener, "Richard Pryor Addresses a Tearful Nation." On that song, Henry invokes perhaps the ultimate saloon moment: "Excuse me while I disappear," he sings, echoing Frank Sinatra's famed ending on "Angel Eyes." Like that misery classic, Scar's songs mostly sputter about an unnamed "you" whose persecutions have left the narrator stuck in besotted melancholy. "I look at you as the thing I wanted most/You look at me, and it's like you've seen a ghost," moans Henry. But where Sinatra found grandeur in this sort of thing, Henry turns from lovelorn to irritatingly existential. "You left me with everything, knowing it would never be enough," goes a typical lament on "Rough and Tumble." It's a moving enough sentiment when the bar is propping you up at 3 a.m., but you don't have to worry with Scar: The morning light will show it's just a paper cut. (RS 869 - May 24, 2001)

RICHARD ABOWITZ