Today marks the reissue of Emmylou Harris’s groundbreaking album Wrecking Ball on Nonesuch Records. Produced by Daniel Lanois (U2, Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Willie Nelson), Wrecking Ball won the 1996 Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Folk Album and was highly praised by critics worldwide. The new three-disc set features the remastered original album, a bonus CD of previously unreleased material, and a DVD of the documentary Building the Wrecking Ball, which was directed by Bob Lanois and includes interviews and studio footage of Harris and Lanois as well as special guests Kate and Anna McGarrigle, Neil Young, Steve Earle, Brian Blade, and others. To pick up a copy, head to iTunes or the Nonesuch Store, where CD/DVD orders include a download of the music at checkout. 

In celebration of the reissue, Harris and Lanois launched an international tour last week. The North American leg of the tour continues with a show at The Vic in Chicago tonight, followed by stops in DC, Brooklyn, Boston, and Toronto. A tour of the Netherlands, Belgium, and the UK follows in May. For additional details and tickets, visit nonesuch.com/on-tour.

The album is "one of the crowning achievements of both of their careers, one of the finest albums by anyone in the past two decades," exclaims the San Francisco Chronicle's Joel Selvin: "a rich, evocative collection of gem-like songs swimming in carefully layered sonic textures, framed by dreamlike settings in pastels and shadows that drew far more from the worlds of folk, rock and even Cajun music than conventional country music ... Harris and Lanois made a classic."

"In a sense, Wrecking Ball provided an ambitious and richly textured template for the coalescing Americana music movement before it took on that name," says the Los Angeles Times's Randy Lewis. "The music was rooted in country, folk, gospel and blues, but with Lanois' sonic wizardry in the mix, it also had an experimental edge that took it well beyond musical archaeology."

In the UK, the reissue earns five stars across the board from Mojo, Record Collector, and Uncut, which calls it "ambitious and audacious ... a masterpiece."

Harris and the album were the subject of a feature article in the Daily Telegraph on Saturday.

"Swinging out of nowhere, with a weight capable of punching a hole right through the soul, Emmylou Harris's 1995 album Wrecking Ball redefined her career," writes the Telegraph's Helen Brown. "Although it was her eighteenth solo record, she was still widely appreciated as a collaborator: first in the early Seventies as Gram Parsons's plaintive singing partner and later harmonising with Dolly Parton and Linda Ronstadt on 1987's best-selling Trio. But the gritty ache of the Grammy-winning Wrecking Ball—reissued and remastered this month—allowed her to plant her cowgal boots firmly in the sand and take a sophisticated new stand as an innovative solo singer."

Read more and hear what Harris has to say at telegraph.co.uk.

Originally released in 1995 to widespread critical praise, Uncut called the album “the most daring, inventive album of Harris’s career,” while Rolling Stone said, “The album features unvarnished, otherworldly renditions of songs written by Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix, Steve Earle, and other lesser-known artists,” and the Los Angeles Times said, “The pace is deliberate, unhurried, meditative, the atmosphere rich, dark, and ghostly.”

The reissue follows a very successful year for Harris, whose new collaborative album with longtime friend and colleague Rodney Crowell, Old Yellow Moon, recently won the Grammy Award for Best Americana Album. Harris and Crowell were also honored with two awards at the 2013 Americana Music Association Honors & Awards Show: Album of the Year and Duo/Group of the Year. A 13-time Grammy winner and Billboard Century Award recipient, Harris’s career as a singer and songwriter spans 40 years. She has recorded more than 25 albums and has lent her talents to countless fellow artists’ recordings. In recognition of her remarkable career, Harris was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2008.