Terri Hendrix
The Art of Removing Wallpaper
Wilory

by Andrew Dansby

Terri Hendrix's albums have always been stylistically varied affairs, but she's never blended the various colors on her palette-folk, pop, bluegrass, gospel, country, jazz-as succinctly and masterfully as on The Art of Removing Wallpaper . This time around, she doesn't so much redefine any one genre as strip them all down, put them in sometimes unlikely combinations and apply them as a new coat of paint. And while you can always count on fleet picking and nimble singing from Hendrix, her fifth studio record fully delivers on the broad, naked emotional resonance promised by the title. These songs are personal and even sensual. While Irish troubadour Luka Bloom has already offered a spare folk reading of LL Cool J's "I Need Love," Hendrix also digs around the song's lusty core and finds that it needn't be gender-specific. The jazzy "It's About Time" provides something of an unofficial mantra for the record, which seems to focus on our short run in this world and what we make of it. Those who compromise it (zealots in "Judgment Day", and corporations in "Monopoly") are singled out, but with a nimble balance of little storms ("Breakdown") and subsequent sunshiny calms ("Enjoy the Ride"), Hendrix also flashes the self-awareness to seek out the better things in life, love and honesty. The Art of Removing Wallpaper is like stumbling on Terri Hendrix's journal, wide open on the table.