Willie Nelson - It Always Will Be

Big Love Booty

Having recently reviewed Willie Nelson’s 2012 release Heroes and been reminded of his genuine legendary status, I’ve been listening to this 2004 album where, like 2006’s Songbird too, Nelson demonstrates his familiar ability to mix romanticism with comedy – not on the same track – so keeping the listener swayed by both the lushness of love laments and the irreverence of comic storytelling, the latter embraced on this album by both Big Booty,

She said I ain’t gonna fix you no more sausage

Biscuits and gravy on the side

You done said the wrong thing to me baby

And you can kiss big booty good-bye

and I Didn’t Come Here (And I Ain’t Leavin’),

I didn’t come here and I ain’t leavin’

I’ve been thrown into better places than this

I didn’t come here and I ain’t leavin’

If you wanna pucker up, I got just the place for you to kiss

There is a gorgeous romantic cover of Tom Wait’s Picture In A Frame, and the duet with daughter Paula Be That As It May has her in one of the best vocals I’ve heard as they both plot the dark side of being down and out. The album opens with, for me, the strongest and most Nelsonesque track It Always Will Be with accordion, pedal steel and Nelson’s nylon strumming then lead caressing with its slow and beautiful narrative,

There are some things I think about

And every time I do it breaks my heart

And there is nothing I can do

About this loneliness I feel when we’re apart

I stop and curse the darkness and the distance

And then your face I see

And when I look into your eyes I see

All the love there is inside of me

With the Wait’s track following this, the album certainly begins in a meditative mood, so be prepared for the mix of emotions the whole album will deliver with Nelson’s usual brilliance.

Willie Nelson – Heroes

Rollin' and Smokin' With Ol' Willie

Another aural treadmill traverse tonight, this time striding with the quintessential Country rhythms of Willie Nelson’s recent, glorious album Heroes. At 79, Willie is still crooning out the most sublime songs with a little bit of outlaw sensibility here and there [Roll Me Up] and with classic Country melody. Synonym son Lukas offers support throughout – and it is a more dynamic duo than when Willie supports on his boy’s albums – and there is further help provided by the likes of Merle Haggard, Snoop Dog [with smoking proclivities rather than any Country affiliations], Kris Kristofferson, Jamey Johnson, Sheryl Crow, Ray Price and others.

Opener A Horse Called Music is a gorgeous cowboy lament with Merle Haggard, and next Roll Me Up [and smoke me before I die] keeps the proceedings lively and irreverent. There is a clutch of beautiful lovelorn songs, like third That’s All There Is To The Song. Fourth No Place To Fly is another painful love confession and the father/son singing of the Nelsons resonates with the varying experience of loss and how to tug us along with the sorryful narrative. This is followed by the two again on Every Time He Drinks He Thinks of Her [but every morning her memory fades away], so more from the heartache of such familiar themes.

Sixth track Tom Wait’s Come On Up To The House, sung as a superb Country gospel, sees Crow providing emotive female vocal support, and it might have been endorphins aroused by the brisk walking [my back is too fucked to run anymore] but I had goose bumps listening to this on full volume to drown out the treadmill’s noisy swirl. Pearl Jam’s Just Breathe sits more comfortably within this whole album than on its own, but I struggle with the cover of Coldplay’s The Scientist, but that is largely down to my antipathy to their latter work. But with lines like Come on back Jesus and pick up John Wayne on the way from Come On Back Jesus, the Country ideology is, thankfully, the predominant feature of this wonderful album.

Willie's Breath

Willie Nelson - Just Breathe

If you click on the link below you can hear Willie's cover of the Pearl Jam ballad Just Breathe. He sings with son Lukas, and it's from his album Heroes to be released in May.

http://www1.rollingstone.com/hearitnow/player/willienelson.html