Hourglass [2 LP]

HOURGLASS is an Enhanced CD containing both a full audio program as well as multimedia computer files. Personnel: James Taylor (vocals, acoustic guitar, harmonica, penny whistle); Valerie Carter, David Lasley, Kate Markowitz, Arnold McCuller, Shawn Colvin, Jill Dell'Abate, Sting (vocals); Bob Mann (guitar); Dan Dugmore (pedal steel guitar); Ross Traut (high strung guitar); Mark O'Connor (fiddle); Yo-Yo Ma (cello); Stevie Wonder (harmonica); Branford Marsalis (soprano & alto saxophones); Michael Brecker (tenor saxophone); Clifford Carter (keyboards); Jimmy Johnson (bass); Edgar Meyer (acoustic bass); Carlos Vega (drums, percussion). Recorded at Chalker's Creek, Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts; Westlake Audio, Los Angeles, California; Right Track Studios, New York, New York. HOURGLASS won the 1998 Grammy Awards for Best Pop Album and for Best Engineered Album, Non-Classical. James Taylor is the godfather of the sensitive singer-songwriter movement of the '70s that clogged the charts with introspective folk-rock ballads and kept scores of troubadour manques up to their well-studied navels in champagne and caviar. He was the Nirvana to that generation's Bush and Stone Temple Pilots, an innovator besieged by imitators. But his '70s-godhead status hasn't hurt him any; he just keeps confessing and crooning on. HOURGLASS more or less follows the path of the last several Taylor releases: precisely articulated, carefully constructed songs that favor soft, muted colors over anything too brash or aggressive; and sinuous, literary songs delivered in Taylor's smooth, relaxed croon. True to form, Taylor pushes all the right boomer buttons on HOURGLASS. The opening cut begins with Richard Nixon's impeachment, and then turns into the kind of inward-looking self-exploration that is Taylor's specialty.