The well-traveled and eclectic singer/songwriter Hank Harris’ new album Beautiful Planet finds the South Dakota-based artist working at the peak of his powers. It’s an eleven-song collection crisscrossing various textures and subjects with breathtaking ease. Harris isn’t afraid of tackling weighty topics and themes complete with incongruous musical landscapes. He consistently makes such moves work to his advantage. There’s a picturesque quality to Harris’ work that jives with his concurrent artistic pursuits as a talented photographer. He’s earned the label of an Americana performer through his past and current work, but Harris’ songwriting proves that labels seldom matter when the overall quality of the work reaches the level of Beautiful Planet’s songs.
He opens the collection with “Modern Medicine”. It’s a darkly sardonic and detailed account of Harris’ experience undergoing serious surgery. His songwriting deserves fulsome plaudits for balancing artful understatement alongside crucial emotional details that reveal the fearful uncertainty produced by enduring this procedure. Harris crafts gentle yet melancholy accompaniment for the performance that strikes a sharp contrast with the lyrical material. Well-placed backing vocals further sweeten his performance.
“Beautiful Planet” has a patient loping vibe with stinging guitar work, a light percussive touch, and crucial organ fills providing color. It hinges on a grim and mournful lyric. Harris’ brief power-packed lines are free from any extraneous verbiage. Placing an album’s title track so early in the running order is often an artistic vote of self-confidence from the performer and, if so, Harris’ instincts are on target. His aptitude for layering songs with significant detail serves him well.
“Grace” is one of the album highlights. This low-key acoustic performance has several low-key inventive turns in its arrangement. Harris’ lyrics have a much more generalized slant than the preceding songs, but they are no less effective. Many listeners will be taken with the payoff that the chorus provides. “Love Is Not Enough” is another condensed gem. It’s a thoughtful pushback against the Pollyanna point of view that espouses love alone can overcome any obstacle. His wont for parrying bleak lyrical points of view with comforting musical arrangements hits an apogee with this cut. The keyboard playing helps accentuate the music’s warm, inviting mood.
“Sonny Boy” is aspirational. It finds Harris reflecting on the musical qualities he thinks he lacks; he can’t sing like Sonny Boy Williamson, Hank Williams, et al. There’s more to this seeming self-deprecation than meets the eye. Adding piercing electric blues guitar and harmonica is a particularly fitting touch for this track. The penultimate track, “Beauty Makes Promises”, is one of the album’s standout moments and shares the same uncompromising character heard in Beautiful Planet’s best. Piano and organ play a pivotal role in its development. Unexpected twists in the arrangement and an outstanding vocal arrangement are noteworthy.
An attentive listen to Hank Harris’ Beautiful Planet reveals a song cycle that isn’t for the faint of heart. However, delivering these cynical missives in supple and inviting musical arrangement mitigates the frequent despair lurking within his writing. It’s a thoroughly satisfying effort from one of the indie world’s best songwriters. It deserves to hearing by the widest possible audience.
Garth Thomas