Album Reviews

Does anyone alive sell a song as effortlessly and convincingly as Willie Nelson? Maybe Tony Bennett, and I'm sure there are a few others. Johnny Cash did it with Willie's brand of clarity and economy.

Many of Nelson's albums are strongly conceptual, like Stardust, the collection of standards produced by Booker T. Jones that Classic has brilliantly reissued on 200g Quiex SV-P at both 33 1/3 and 45rpm.

This album combines a variety of Nelson's predilections: songwriting, singing duets and covering popular tunes- mostly in the service of slow drifting love songs and laments.

The usually prolific songwriter contributes but three of the album's fourteen tunes. His daughter Paula and son Lukas each write one. Nelson's duets are with Lucinda Williams on her tune “Overtime,” and Norah Jones on “Dreams Come True.” While his cover choices are often unusual- he's previoumostly in the service of slow drifting love songs and lamentsI don't know where this recent release fits into the extensive Nelson catalog. It's a traditional country album filled with elastic pedal steel, twangy electric and bracingly picked acoustic guitars. The vibe is as much if not more Bakersfield than Nashville-and certainly it's more traditional Nashville than the new country/pop big hat stuff.

The ballad-filled album leads with a gorgeous version of Nelson's tender love song “It Always Will Be,” featuring some deep picking from the still nimble-fingered 72 year old. “Picture in a Frame” is equally reverential, and that's followed by “The Way You See Me,” a broken hearted lament.

I'll skip further play by play to say that this is a thoroughly enjoyable album that holds up to repeated plays both because of the music and the sound, which is tastefully contemporary and intimate and because Nelson's sincerity sells the songs and makes you question your own.

Everything's closely miked and rendered with intimate detail any hyper-clarity. What's lost in atmospherics is more than made up for by the overall crystalline clarity and the precision with which transients are etched into the grooves on this double LP.