Which brings us to the recently released All I Intended to Be, with its similar front-cover offering of Harris as the silver-haired spectral goddess, much like we saw on its three predecessors. Tellingly, however, here we see the vocalist - in gorgeous black-and-white tones - walking through the woods on what appears to be the least sunny day of the year. It's an interesting contrast from the artsy interior shots and/or airy interpretations adorning the fronts of the Daniel Lanois/Malcolm Burn trio of albums, and an entirely fitting one. All I Intended to Be is by far the earthiest, most obviously rootsy album she has done in quite some time, and so back to the woods we go, back to trying to keep both feet in the dirt rather than aiming for the heavens. "Try" being the operative word in that sentence, Harris remains quite the celestial presence, and so here we have roots music that billows with atmosphere, thanks to the subtle blend of gossamer vocals with delicate room-filling acoustic textures.

Overall, the album feels simultaneously like a reaction against its three precursors and a further distillation of the triptych's mood-making hoodoo. Having temporarily bid goodbye to the sonic whooshes and ringing ambience of her recent work, she draws readily upon the more traditionally minded folk and country flavors of her earlier years of recording, thus switching the rock sensibilities and genre-splicing production for a stripped-down, less ornamental production. Harris clearly has kept the lessons of the Lanois/Burn collaborations in mind - her latest continues to celebrate the heavenly, frequently otherworldly fluttering properties of her voice with a production that provides appropriately ghost-evoking sonic backdrops for the fragile, heartfelt storytelling at work here. Sure, there's less studio trickery to speak of, but listeners will get just as many goosebumps as ever upon tumbling into the disc's pristine mise-en-scene.

Much of the success should be attributed to Brian Ahern's carefully restrained, luxuriously rustic production; while hardly as blatant about the drive to create moods as Lanois or Burn, he certainly appears just as motivated by such concerns, having treated every acoustic guitar, pedal steel, and mandolin to a glimmering sheen worthy of Harris' glorious voice. Ahern, it should be noted, is not only Harris' ex-husband but also the producer of her first 11 albums - including 1975's essential twin-juggernaut of Elite Hotel and Pieces of the Sky and 1977's equally revered Luxury Liner (all Reprise/ Warner Brothers) - and All I Intended to Be feels like a logical continuation of where the collaboration last left off all those years ago.

Still, listeners familiar with the Ahern/Harris years shouldn't expect much in the way of that illustrious union's honky-tonk kick-ups. There's no boozy older-sister counterpart to "Ooh Las Vegas" or "Bluebird Wine" here, but instead the album remains firmly rooted in gradually unfolding slow or mid-tempo numbers, and nearly all are quite introspective in nature. Generally speaking, Harris' latest shows more similarity to early-years tearjerkers such as "Boulder to Birmingham" and "Til I Gain Control Again" than any of the boot-stomping Gram Parsons/Flying Burrito Brothers homages she offered up during that phase of her career. Generally speaking, it's a quietly elegant, controlled record, full of rivetingly-expressed heartbreak and thoughtful meditations on mortality. In this sense, it very much can be considered an extension of what she has accomplished over the course of her last three full-lengths.

As much as Harris has grown magnificently as a songwriter - more on that later - she has also shown herself to be not only a flawless interpreter, but just as importantly a wise selector of which songs to cover in the first place. Again, the largely covers Wrecking Ball presents compelling evidence of her knack for choosing songs that she can truly inhabit, but consider some of her other inspired takes over the years: the Louvin Brothers' "If I Could Only Win Your Love," the Beatles' "Here There and Everywhere," and Dolly Parton's "To Daddy," for example. Here, her choices are equally stimulating.

The recording opens with a stirring version of the Jack Wesley Routh-written "Shores of White Sand," a keep-your-chin-up rumination on carrying on again after heartbreak. A slowly cascading track pushed along by thumping drum rolls evocative of waves crashing upon the beach, the song is particularly interesting in Harris' use of the instrumental backdrop from an earlier version, recorded in 1982 by Nashville vocalist Karen Brooks. Obviously impressed with the power of Brooks' take, she decided to keep the instrumental track - surging with electric guitar ripples and floated skyward with haunting tin whistle melodies - and then simply built upon it, even inviting Brooks into the studio to provide ravishing harmonies. A mere 20 seconds into the album, Harris' first hello arrives with the words "here I go again / back to that feeling," delivered in a curiously wavering mix of choked-up-edness and head-held-high positive affirmation. Such a simple turn of phrase, on paper or computer screen, but she doles the words out with such a forceful imperative that it's little wonder the song was selected to open All I Intended to Be.

Elsewhere, Patty Griffin's "Moon Song" is soaked in a warm bath of accordions and graceful mandolins, with Harris floating the tender plea, "Time, go easy on me tonight." Her makeover of Mark Germino's "Broken Man's Lament" - the heart-ripping tale of a mechanic whose wife and mother of his children runs off "to sing like Patsy Cline" - is probably the hugest number, a momentum-gathering five-minute domestic drama in which brushed drums and simple guitar strums give way to a pounding rhythm, whirring electric piano, and full-throated harmonies before easing back into careful restraint, only to ramp up the levels once again at the end. Thanks to such grand gestures, the song could easily fit amongst the atmospheric heroics of Wrecking Ball. Personally, I'm quite eager to hear how it might be conveyed live.

Tracy Chapman's "All That You Have Is Your Soul" is total spectral-folk satisfaction, all shimmering, glistening guitars, and twinkling keyboards over understated percussion. "Don't be tempted by the shiny-happy," Harris warns in her best been-there-done-that sigh. "Don't you eat of the bitter fruit." Spoken with such moral authority, she wrings so much emotion from the lyrics that the voice-of-experience point of view never comes across as pedantic, but rather the rueful confession of someone who's not afraid to admitting her mistakes. Unassumingly powerful stuff.

Harris' songwriting on All I Intended to Be is a mighty force as well. Her two collaborations with Kate and Anna McGarrigle, "How Could She Sing the Wildwood Flower" and "Sailing Round the Room," are the latest swoon-worthy results of what has proven to be a marvelously fertile alliance. The former, a pastoral folk number augmented by alluring banjo textures and resplendent harmonies from the McGarrigles, contains some of the full-length's most affecting moments of sweet ache, thanks to Harris' occasionally choked-up turns of phrase.

"Sailing Round the Room" - sung from the vantage point of a woman leaving her body as she passes away - deftly handles the subject matter at hand without succumbing to New Age-y cliché or clunky exposition. Rather, it's loaded with elegant, lovingly-rendered images of freedom, effortlessly revealed over subdued washes of accordion and soft chimes of mandolin. "Gonna lay my burden down, take a bird's-eye look around," she announces after saying farewell to loved ones, before heading off to go "sailing around the room," and what could've ended up in sappy territory instead manages to result in one of the most beautiful songs about mortality I have ever heard.

Top marks, however, go to "Gold," a devastating Harris-penned ballad brimming with regret and loss. Over crying pedal steel guitar, Harris and Dolly Parton harmonize to knee-buckling effect on the apologetic chorus, "No matter how bright I glitter, baby / I could never be gold." Parton's signature trills are used in marvelously sob-worthy measures here, but the real punch in the gut comes when Vince Gill steps in to fill out the song's three-way harmonies, particularly on the following broken confession: "I'd finally gave up counting the ways you said I let you down / when I fell into that river of no return and you watched me drown."

EMMYLOU HARRIS
With Jimmy Gaudreau and Moondie Klein
July 26, 8 p.m., $35-$75
Nob Hill Masonic Auditorium
1111 California, SF