Willie Nelson
The Sound In Your Mind
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It's difficult to get a handle on Willie Nelson's new album. From its title to its celestial cover to the medley which concludes the record, it seems arbitrary, confused and just a little bit spacey. In certain ways it is no great departure from his pathbreaking work of the last few years. It is not a thematically unified album, like Phases and Stages and Red Headed Stranger, but then I am not sure if that approach has ever altogether worked except as a framework for the songs Nelson cares about, both his own and, particularly in the case of this and the last album, the work of others as well. The sparse instrumentation (piano, two guitars, bass, drums, harmonica) is the
Read More same as on the last album and certainly suits Willie's laconic style. Even the song selection, while giving us only one new Willie Nelson composition, would appear to be exemplary enough from a listing of titles alone. "That Lucky Old Sun (Just Rolls around Heaven All Day)" is an enterprising choice to lead off an album still nominally country. "Amazing Grace" touches every Southern Baptist's roots. Lefty Frizzell's "If You've Got the Money I've Got the Time," enjoying a revival of sorts among honky-tonk traditionalists, is done up in rollicking fashion. The eight-and-a-half-minute medley consists of three of Willie Nelson's finest compositions, "Crazy," "Night Life" and the classic "Funny How Time Slips Away." What seems to have gone wrong? Well, for one thing, with the exception of the Lefty Frizzell tune, nearly every song comes out sounding like a dirge, and the persistent, depressingly drab tone of track after track seems almost perverse. From this point of view I find the first side as a whole almost unlistenable, although individually each of the songs has merit. The Steve Fromholz composition, "I'd Have to Be Crazy," proves a perfect vehicle for the wryly plaintive melancholy of Nelson's voice. The Sound in Your Mind lacks any consistent sense of purpose. What, for example, is the point of a lengthy, rambling and literal-minded version of a song as familiar as "Amazing Grace"? The ragged chorus, the dogged repetition, the almost coyly antiseptic piano only contribute to the impression that the song is being treated as a kind of goof, although this is the sort of deeply felt standard which Willie Nelson has brought vividly to life in the past. The same purposelessness plagues two of side one's more familiar-sounding songs, "A Penny for Your Thoughts" and Nelson's own "The Healing Hands of Time." They are well crafted, singer and band are comfortable with the material, but, in sharp contrast to Red Headed Stranger, the music has no edge. Even "The Sound in Your Mind," the one new song Nelson contributed to the album, maintains a kind of aimlessness which carries paradox so far as to be almost precious. Although I like the song very much, I wonder how much further such cleverness can go. Finally, there is a musical
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