Trampoline (Joe Henry album)
| Trampoline | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
 |
||||
| Studio album by Joe Henry | ||||
| Released | 1996 | |||
| Recorded | October 1994 - June 1995 | |||
| Studio | Sonora Recorders, Los Angeles, California | |||
| Genre | Alternative | |||
| Length | 41:41 | |||
| Label | Mammoth | |||
| Producer | Pat McCarthy, Joe Henry | |||
| Joe Henry chronology | ||||
|
||||
| Professional ratings | |
|---|---|
| Review scores | |
| Source | Rating |
| Allmusic |
   link
|
| Pitchfork Media | 8.1/10 link |
| Entertainment Weekly | A- link |
| Robert Christgau |
 link
|
| NME | 8/10 link |
| Rolling Stone |
link
|
Trampoline is the sixth studio album by Joe Henry, released in 1996. It featured a musical collaboration between Henry and guitarist Page Hamilton of alternative metal band Helmet and included a cover version of "Let Me Have It All" from Sly and the Family Stone's 1973 Fresh album.
Interviewed on the Sessions at West 54th TV show in 1998, Henry said when he began making Trampoline, he was determined to learn a new way to work. "Usually because I didn't have enough money and I didn't know how to work any other way. Just live in the studio. Get a band, circle the wagons, and then just kind of have at it. And it's more like making a documentary film, you get what you get, problems and all. More like live theater. And I wanted to think more like a filmmaker, I wanted to be able to manipulate things more. And work on it in bits and pieces and I started by setting up a little studio at home and exactly that.
"I came up with a drum loop first, and thought, 'Jeez, I've never written, here's a rhythm, I've never operated under this umbrella. Let's do this one.' And then make myself write to that. And, I just learned to work backwards. I think it's good to be disoriented to a certain degree."
Henry said producer Patrick McCarthy, who had worked with U2 and Robbie Robertson, helped reshape his approach to songwriting and production. "When you begin a career in music, people hear where you are and assume that that's all you are. And if you're not careful, you might start assuming the same thing. I did, for a while, hear my 'voice' as a writer, producer and singer, and believe it was all that was available to me. And it's funny in retrospect to think that I could have been frustrated to the point of quitting without thinking first that maybe I just ought to learn a new way to work. But once someone put my nose in it—that someone being my new co-producer Patrick McCarthy—I felt liberated for the first time; the recording process now becoming as much 'a process' as writing had always been.
"The turning point was in taking a bit of my recording budget and setting up a studio in my garage, allowing me to work whenever I wanted, piece by piece; allowing me to write to new rhythms, record to loops, play bass, and steal like a thief with my sampler. I was free from the role of Boy Scout Leader, which is how I always felt trying to lead six or more players in the studio during 'live' sessions. And as I learned all this, I made a record called Trampoline, which again, felt like starting over from scratch. I wrote backwards: from the groove up instead of letting lyrics dictate everything. I was also writing lyrics that were less narrative and more fragmented, in a way that I hoped the music was. I was using technology, but like a primitive, and many beautiful mistakes resulted."
...
Wikipedia