It Will Always Be

This is Willie Nelson’s second new album in a month, not bad for a man in his seventies. However a little less profligacy might enable him to escape the turgid arrangements and clichéd approach to most of the material on this release. Miraculously, Nelson’s voice is in vintage form, and succeeds in making this album more than listenable. With his vocal performances on ‘Love’s The One And Only Thing’, ‘My Broken Heart Belongs To You’, ‘It Always Will Be’ and the duet with Lucinda Williams ‘Overtime’, he manages to transcend the ordinariness of the playing. Tom Waits’ plaintive love song ‘Picture In A Frame’ is perfect for Nelson’s voice, and the duet with Norah Jones is as languorously after hours as you’d expect. The 12-bar country-blues ‘I Didn’t Come Here’, a paean to more bars than twelve, rocks out a little, as does ‘Big Booty’.
However the soft-rock duet with Paula Nelson as well as ‘You Were It’ are poor bordering on banal.
The only track that has more of a modern feel to it is the Allman Brothers’ ’70s classic ‘Midnight Rider’, tucked away at the end of the album presumably to avoid scaring the horses. But the real gem is ‘Tired’, a song about how life can sometimes erode even the strongest spirit. Harmonica player Mickey Raphael tries hard to inject some musical muscle into the proceedings, but ultimately this album is as safe and predictable as a Republican rally, rescued only by a voice that goes deeper than a Texas oil-well.