Spirit Willie Nelson Artist

Of all the records {|Willie Nelson|} made in the 1990s and since that time, none is more misunderstood or ignored than {|Spirit|}. Coming as it did so quietly and unobtrusively in 1996, a year and a half before the celebrated {|Teatro|}, {|Spirit|} i... Read more

Of all the records {|Willie Nelson|} made in the 1990s and since that time, none is more misunderstood or ignored than {|Spirit|}. Coming as it did so quietly and unobtrusively in 1996, a year and a half before the celebrated {|Teatro|}, {|Spirit|} is {|Willie|}'s most focused album of that decade. Self-produced and featuring the sparest of instrumental settings -- {|Willie|} and {|Jody Payne|} play guitars, {|Bobbie Nelson|} plays piano, and {|Johnny Gimble|} plays fiddle on certain tracks -- {|Nelson|} weaves a tapestry, a song cycle about brokenness, loneliness, heartbreak, spiritual destitution, and emerging on the other side. The set begins with the instrumental {|Matador,|} which seems to usher in the atmospheric texture for this album. {|She's Gone|} tells its heartbreak story with as much lilt and pastoral grace as is possible without being sentimental. {|Willie|}'s guitar soloing is gorgeous; he's deep in the groove of the washes of {|Bobbie|}'s chords. Hearing a steel-string guitar play rhythm and a nylon-string guitar play lead is an interesting twist as well. But {|Nelson|} digs the notion of {|She's Gone|} deeper into the listener's consciousness with {|Your Memory Won't Die in My Grave|}: Been feelin' kinda free/But I'd rather feel your arms around me/Because you're takin' away/Everything I ever wanted..../It's a memory today, it'll be a memory tomorrow/I hope you're happy someday/Your memory won't die in my grave.... And when {|Nelson|} moves to the full acceptance issue as he does on {|I'm Not Trying to Forget You,|} the music is slightly off-kilter in the intro, as if the singer cannot come to grips with the song. {|Payne|} plays just behind {|Willie|}, stretching time, making it slip and shimmer all the way into {|Too Sick to Pray,|} the most devastating {|country|} {|waltz|} to be recorded since {|Johnny Paycheck|}'s {|Little Darlin'|} albums. On {|I'm Waiting Forever|} and {|We Don't Run,|} the sun begins to rise out of the heart's bleak night and comes to the dawn of a new day in the life of love and spiritual connection. This is {|Nelson|} writing conceptually as he did early on with {|Phases and Stages|} and {|Red Headed Stranger|}, but he is at his understated best here, moving deeply into the skeleton of the song itself and what it chooses to reveal through the singer. And while {|Spirit|} is quiet, it's a tough, big record that makes you confront the roar of silence in your own heart. ~ Thom Jurek Less