AMY HELM

This Too Shall Light YEP ROC 7/10 levon’s offspring gets the Joe henry treatment

Since helming Solomon Burke’s Don’t Give Up On Me in 2002, writer/artist Joe Henry has remade himself as a singer’s producer, thoughtfully suggesting material and placing his subjects in impeccable aural environments crafted by his team of song-serving players. The taut-grooved title cut of Amy Helm’s LP, co-written by Hiss Golden Messenger’s MC Taylor, establishes the prevailing mode of choir-sung gospel, which blossoms on Henry’s Tumbleweed Connectionevoking “Odetta”. But elsewhere Helm seems constrained within the immaculate settings, only intimating the emotional lift-off the material yearns for. She makes a deeper connection with the newly penned “Heaven’s Holding Me”, delivering the LP’s most heartfelt, uplifting performance.