I've started listening to Emmylou Harris' new album, entitled "All I Intended to Be".This her first solo album in five years. It was produced by Brian Ahern, the producer behind her first 11 albums (and her ex-husband) and it is the first time in 25 years they have worked together.

The opening track 'Shores of White Sand' written by Jack Wesley Routh is one of the albums less mournful songs, as it has a sense of hope and touch of redemption:

Harris wrote or co-wrote six of the 13 songs on the CD, and the music reaches back toward a sound and style that recall the country and folk influences of her earlier work prior to the innovative Wrecking Ball of 1995. Produced by Daniel Lanois and featuring her band Spyboy, it is one of my favourite album in her extensive body of work along with Pieces of the Sky (1975).

I've dipped into the both Red Dirt Girl (2000) a companion piece to Wrecking Ball and the latter Stumble Into Grace (2003), which followed the trajectory of Wrecking Ball's ethereal, otherworldly effects I was underwhelmed by some of Harris' song-writing on first hearings. All I Intended to Be is more angled toward contemporary folk music with country elements than the other way around. Does that mean Emmylou's Daniel Lanois period is over?

The space in the production from the rocked-up, grainily atmospheric sound of Wrecking Ball is retained in what is a largely acoustic album about woe, sadness and mourning of lost love and lost time. It is split between originals and covers of little-known songs that places Harris' writing in context of other writers. The music expresses the sense of Harris looking back, considering the musical road she’s travelled; one of following in the foot steps of Gram Parsons, defining and changing country music along the way.

If the ambient country–pleasant sound with its minimalist approach to their production borders on roots-music kitsch, it is Harris' voice with its aching compassion and sense of phrasing that lifts it away from kitsch.