The music: clean, uncluttered introspective. The songs: conveying the stark, sere, loneness of the singer. It's been called "blue collar blues" and I'd call it that, too, more than I'd call it country music. Only three of the songs are new, written in the 1990s, the rest are refashioned from the 1960s, and the 30 years in between scarcely matter. The songs were chosen and pieced together to tell the story of obssessive love or convey the concept of domestic abuse, whichever way you want to see it. And they do succeed in working together. They succeed in taking hold of your heart and grabbing onto it hard.
Somehow, in Willie Nelson's mature voice, the older songs take on a new edge and freshness. Emmy Lou Harris's background voice deepens the poignancy and works sweetly with Willie's. Hers is the ghostly voice of the victim and, ironically, but not uniquely, still a loving one. It moves in out of a distance, as if from the grave.
His guitar is out front in every song, but is influenced by an almost Latin American sound of guitars, drums, piano and harmonica. The resulting sound is stronger and more persistent than I usually like up against Willie's voice, but I don't think I would want to do without it. I wouldn't want to do without any of it, in fact.
very helpful by (56%):
helpful by (11%):
somewhat helpful by (33%):
