Pieces of the Sky

Generic "I don't like the vast majority of Country music". She has a nice voice I guess, but I just find it so boring.

Great album. Good song choice. Well song. Ok arrangements.

Knew the artist but not the music.. I enjoyed it.

The upbeat stuff is great. The downbeat stuff is a drag.
The Beatles cover in particular is so slow it almost grinds to a halt. Appreciated Mrs Mills on piano on the last track.

Unfortunately there's too much downbeat and little upbeat hence a sub-par score from me.
2½

Gorgeous voice. Most of the songs and general musical style not really for me.

Nydelig og spennende køntri. Hvis albumet bare hadde klart å holde toppene hele albumet, hadde dette vært
en lett femmer, men det er litt for ujevnt.

Kunne klart seg uten verdens kjedeligste versjon av For No One.

Lovely voice but I didn't really notice it

What makes this project interesting is the fact that, despite all your musical training, you always come across albums you don't know yet. This is almost always the case in the country music sector, because this style is practically irrelevant here in Europe.
There are, of course, a few exceptions, and Emmylou Harris is possibly one of them - at least I was familiar with her name. “Pieces of the Sky” marks something of a breakthrough for her, and the album is actually not bad. Her voice is well showcased, and the arrangements of the songs (which are typically monotonous for country music) contain a few eye-catchers.
It's not a bad way to go.

Great vocals and warm production were the highlights. Didn't think anything was particularly fantastic, but it was a good record nonetheless. Dug the Beatles cover the most

Emmylou learned from Gram to sing country from the depths as well as the surfaces, which means going pop, going rock, and going for nothing but the soul. 'I have come to listen for the sound / Of the trucks as they move down out on 95.' She's more Joni and Mary (Travers) than Patsy or Dolly - she's more of a soarer than a crier, hence the title of this record. But that doesn't mean she's an ethereal or vapid angel. She has her problems, no doubt, and she gains from Merle to be straight, to be actual: 'The one true friend I thought I'd found / Tonight, the bottle let me down.' I prefer Dolly's 'Coat of Many Colors,' and tho Harris is an Alabamian, it don't always feel that way. If I want southern, this isn't where I'd go, but good for you it is.

Sacrilegious perhaps but really not my thing

*Fantastic classic country album
*Loved Boulder to Birmingham and Coat of Many Colors

Sounds like home but kinda mid.

This was a pretty one 😌

Oei, daar is Emmylou weer. Die hadden we net nog gehad en ik had wat spijt van een ster te veel. Want man, wat was dat saai.

Dit album is een kwart eeuw eerder opgenomen. Maar dat maakt bij Emmylou eigenlijk niet uit. Het is eveneens gewoon saai (al doet het eerste nummer anders beloven). Goed, er zijn lichte verschillen. Emmylou vaarde in 1975 nog iets meer op beproefde muziekconcepten. Wat het geheel tegelijk net iets toegankelijker en net iets saaier maakt en waardoor dit album eigenlijk niets te zoeken heeft in deze lijst.

Harris’ powerful voice is the feature of this album: hauntingly melodic or remarkably intense. It’s an epic vocal display, one that rightly lead to a legendary career.
The actual material, almost exclusively covers of country standards, is where my appreciation ends. The straightforward nature of traditional country music, the lack of lyrical nuance and the ceaseless use of repetition that hallmarks the style betray the subtleties and variety that Harris is capable of and should be delivering. Personally, I wish she had leaned much more into her folk tendencies on this album and less into the country styles that she did.
But I’m just an anonymous guy with enough free time to review 1001 albums for fun, so wtf do I know?

I was actually familiar with several of the tracks on here (I live in Norfolk so of course I would be), and the opener is actually a banger (maybe I've just had it bashed into my head so much that I'm experiencing a live case of Stockholm syndrome), but a fair bit of the rest of it... isn't actually that bad for a country album?

There is some absolute tripe on this for sure - If I Could Only Take a Flamethrower to the track of a similar title, I gladly would, and "Bottle Let Me Down" has a face that not even a mother could love, but "Boulder to Birmingham", "Before Believing" and "For No One" are lovely acoustic, folky ballads, "Sleepless Nights" at worst could just be considered a bit inoffensive, and "Coat of Many Colors" is just a Dolly Parton cover so I suppose it's hard to butcher that. The final few tracks are... bloody awful. It's comically bizarre how as soon as the backing band starts warming up again, Harris sets out to pierce your eardrums, but she sounds great during the album's pared back moments, and half a decent album isn't bad for this sort of thing.

Solid country.

Черговий кантрі альбом, мені не сподобався.

Yeah, that’s a 5.

Emmylou Harris’s voice is just such a conduit for emotion that it’s able to carry a whole track by itself, and it carries this entire album brilliantly. The instrumentation enhances it a lot, but… man, her vocals are just that good. I can’t describe them with any other word but “angelic”. It’s pretty variable too; while a lot of this album is comprised of sadder songs, the closing track “Queen of the Silver Dollar” ends with her just going “da da da” to the tune of the chorus, and it gives off a party vibe.

This is an album made of mostly covers, so I can’t quite give the songwriting all the credit in the world except to the original artists. It’s a loaded lineup by the way; Merle Haggard, Shel Silverstein, John & Paul, Dolly Parton herself, and more. Emmylou Harris at least knows how to pick them. However, she does have one track she penned on here: “Boulder to Birmingham”, a lamenting ballad about her inability to really cope with Gram Parsons’ death 2 years before. It’s a brilliantly written track, and it really does capture the feeling of being sort of an emotional powderkeg. It makes me wonder why she didn’t write more original material, especially with how good “Red Dirt Girl” turned out 25 years later.

I do think the music speaks for itself here; I can’t really write any more words praising “old country” like this, and Emmylou’s voice will portray far far more depth than what I can say about these tracks. This is a great 5; it’s worth a listen, it’s worth being on the list, and once again, Emmylou Harris has just blown me away. Not bad for someone who I’d never heard of before starting this whole 1001 Albums thing.