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The Straits Times
Singapore
IN YOUR DREAMS: If change is the constancy in the career of 25 year-old Lady Gaga, then Emmylou Harris, 64, and Stevie Nicks, 63, are queens of timelessness who chart their own evolutionary paths.
Harris’ latest, Hard Bargains, is a retrospective baste in melancholy, but never once feels treacly. Her raspy, gossamer purr eulogises Canadian folk icon Kate McGarrigle who died last year of cancer (Darlin’ Kate); and her mentor Gram Parsons, who overdosed on morphine and alcohol back in 1973 (The Road).
She won’t wallow and shows she can still kick up a fuss when she wants to.
Her post-Katrina anthem, New Orleans, has fire, and Six White Cadillacs is a honky-tonk lovely that will keep your foot tapping.
Nicks, likewise, has the languid assuredness of someone who’s paid her dues. Her latest, In Your Dreams, her first in a decade, is her best in years.
The album, co-produced by Eurythmics’ Dave Stewart, boasts high-gloss gumption and poetic grit.
Presiding over her gypsy kingdom, she fuses myth and reality. Whether waxing about a Secret Love or taking cues from the Twilight series in Moonlight (A Vampire’s Dream) or Edgar Allan Poe in Annabel Lee, she glows and glowers fabulously.
