 Willie Nelson Of the 60,000 albums Willie Nelson's put out since 1890, this one might prove to be the best of all, quite a bit different sonically from his popular country stuff, but still very much in the spirit of what he's always done—self-effacing, good-time music with a twist of real sadness, and brilliant musicianship that never comes at you in a straightforward way. Willie is one of the true "American originals" (surprisingly, he's never put out an album with that title or appeared in a country music supergroup with that name—but wait and see), and even when he's half-assing an album it's usually worth hearing. Teatro finds him sounding more inspired than ever, clearly enjoying himself and his company: producer Daniel Lanois, who also plays guitar, Emmylou Harris, who sings harmonies on most tracks, Bobbie Nelson, primarily on Wurlitzer organ, and even jazz pianist Brad Mehldau on a few tracks (playing vibes and Hammond, even). Lanois has given the album a totally atypical sound for Willie and for him—none of the swirly swamp-sound and aural hugeness you'll find on some of Lanois' more famous productions (Yellow Moon by the Neville Brothers, Oh Mercy by Bob Dylan, The Joshua Tree by U2). The album was recorded in an abandoned Mexican movie theater, and has a looseness to it that sort of makes me think it was probably cranked out in a few days, which is actually to the album's benefit. The band is kept simple, just guitars, bass, organ, and on several tracks, two drummers, giving the sound a cross between Tex-Mex rock and deep south country. Opening with a nearly three-minute acoustic guitar solo by Willie ("Ou Es-Tu, Mon Amour") is audacious, but it is the perfectly bleak opening to the album, immediatley segueing into "I Never Cared For You," a 1962 Willie composition that couldn't be more depressing (the opening line is "The sun is filled with ice and gives no warmth at all"), and is given a supremely stark treatment. The tracklist focuses on old and new Willie songs with a particular element of true bleakness ("I've Just Destroyed the World," "Darkness on the Face of the Earth," "Somebody Pick Up My Pieces," "These Lonely Nights"), and a running theme seems to be the globalization of individual pain—several tracks actually have Willie witnessing atmospheric or climatic changes because he's got a broken heart: "The sun has gone behind the clouds/There's darkness all around me know/For I've just destroyed the world I'm living in." Willie must be Superman or something—I had no idea the weather's been so awful because he keeps getting left by his one true love. Willie's 1993 album Across the Borderline is often heralded as his late-period masterpiece, but that album had too much of a sense of purposeful intent behind it, almost like he and the producers were deliberately setting out to make a classic. With Teatro, it seems like they were going for the opposite, just making a fun little record, but it's a great one through and through, with no bum tracks and an emotional connectivity to it that you don't usually find in country music. Incidentally, can I possibly string together more run-on sentences? It must be the mescaline. Anyway, many times country (specifically classic country) is something like the blues—you don't necessarily relate to the specific things the singer is saying, but you get solace from it because it's so utterly human. Teatro is not immediately accessible as a very deep album, but the more you listen to it the deeper it proves to be, and then when Willie rattles off a line like "What makes me think that I could go on hurting her/I should have known there'd have to be an end," you believe it all the way. Emmylou Harris adds a lot of warmth to the record, and the band is dead-on. It's loose, but more in an unrestrained way than in a sloppy way. It sounds like a record that was a ton of fun to make, and I hope Willie is proud of it—it's a great testament to him as a songwriter and performer. Hopefully all the profits haven't already gone straight to weed.
Review by C. Howard |