Joe Henry, highly esteemed and critically acclaimed songwriter, four-time Grammy winning producer is soon to release his 13th album. “I went into the making of this whole record with an ethos driven by emotional clarity,” Henry says of Invisible Hour, by far his most personal work to-date. His departure here makes this a stand-out in his catalogue, and surely a record he hasn’t made before. “I wanted it to sound as if I were face to face with anybody listening to it.”
“The sound of a Joe Henry record is unmistakable, whether it’s one of his own or one he’s produced. There’s richness to the instruments, as well as depth and warmth that help set his world apart.” NPR
Described in the San Francisco Weekly as a “literate purveyor of a kind of folk-imbued, smokily jazzified, contemporary “adult music” that in a far better world would reside at the top of the pop charts.”
In a career spanning more than two decades, Henry as a songwriter, artist and producer has left a unique imprint on American popular music. On his own albums, Henry has collaborated with many remarkable American artists, including Don Cherry, T Bone Burnett, Victoria Williams, The Jayhawks’ Gary Louris and Marc Perlman, guitarists Page Hamilton, Bill Frisell and Marc Ribot, Daniel Lanois, Jakob Dylan, and even Ornette Coleman in a rare appearance for the jazz icon.
Allmusic's Thom Jurek, wrote that Henry “has moved into a space that only he and Tom Waits inhabit in that they are songwriters who have created deep archetypal characters that are composites—metaphorical, allegorical, and ‘real’—of the world around them and have created new sonic universes for them to both explore and express themselves in.”
As an album producer, Henry’s influence has shaped the sound of iconoclastic artists including Elvis Costello, Allen Toussaint, Glen Hansard, Lisa Hannigan, Ani DiFranco, Bettye LaVette, and Aimee Mann. In 2003, he earned a Grammy Award for his production role on Solomon Burke’s astonishing comeback record Don’t Give Up On Me, and reworked alongside his hero and good friend Loudon Wainwright III to create the score for the hit film Knocked Up, material which later became Wainwright’s full-length Strange Weirdos.
Invisible Hour to be released in Australia in August 8th via Planet/MGM was recorded at Henry’s own Pasadena Studio The Garfield House with musicians: Greg Leisz, John Smith, Jay Bellerose, Jennifer Condos, David Piltch, and Levon Henry. The album features guest appearances by The Milk Carton Kids and Lisa Hannigan-the latter co-wrote the title track along with Henry and novelist Colum McCann. The album was recorded, mixed, and mastered by Grammy-winning engineer and regular Henry co-conspirator Ryan Freeland.