Emmylou Harris & Rodney Crowell: The Traveling Kind

If Old Yellow Moon, Emmylou Harris and Rodney Crowell’s first-ever duet album, felt like old friends catching up and remembering old times, The Traveling Kind seems like one for the road. Entrenched in the things they do well—roadhouse revelry, a funky kind of country honk, heart-aching ballads—the Joe Henry-produced project eschews the formalness of old friends finding their way for a playful jumble that bubbles (“Bring It On Home To Memphis”), sweetheart waltzes (“Just Pleasing You”) and tracks that get down in the pocket (“If You Lived Here, You’d Be Home Now”).

Crowell has always had a hip-tilt cool to his Texas urgency, while Harris’ silvery voice is pristine, glistening, a perfect conduit for raw emotion. Though unlikely as partners in vocal style, especially with Crowell’s word-punch phrasing, their roots resonance merges on the saddest song of romantic failure, “You Can’t Say We Didn’t Try,” which ripples with the raw ache Tammy Wynette brought to her best work.

The ethereal “Higher Mountain” is seeking, believing—and Harris is a pilgrim on a path to transcendence, acoustic instruments creating a basket for all the emotions she sows. Equally gripping are the traded-off vocal lines on “No Memories Hanging ‘Round,” deliciously sung 30-some years ago as a duet between the burgundy-voiced Rosanne Cash and craggy tomcat Bobby Bare on her debut. Here the song moves from plea to surrender: two weathered grown-ups try to forget the past in another’s arms. Clear-eyed, grown up, this is old-school icehouse country for people of complications and contradictions.