NEW audioCD

Songbird

Product Description

1 x CD Album
Europe 2006 1 - Rainy Day Blues (5:32)
2 - Songbird (2:40)
3 - Blue Hotel (3:30)
4 - Back To Earth (2:59)
5 - Stella Blue (6:23)
6 - Hallelujah (4:53)
7 - $1000 Wedding (3:05)
8 - We Don't Run (4:19)
9 - Yours Love (3:03)
10 - Sad Songs And Waltzes (3:17)
11 - Amazing Grace (4:49)

Amazon.com

For better and for worse, this trans-generational pairing of Willie Nelson and producer Ryan Adams takes the veteran into musical territory where he wouldn't have likely ventured on his own. There's long been an organic unity to Nelson's signature sound--the way his conversational phrasing plays against the staccato runs of his gypsy guitar, with the backing of a band that's been with him so long he calls them Family. On Songbird, Adams substitutes the more aggressively electric backing of his own band, the Cardinals, and plainly had a large say in selecting and arranging the material. Two highlights that most bear his imprint are "Blue Hotel," which Adams wrote for the project and with which Nelson plainly connects, and the bluesy, ominous arrangement by Adams of the closing "Amazing Grace," which sounds closer to "House of the Rising Sun." At the other extreme, Nelson's lumbering take on the Grateful Dead's "Stella Blue," which culminates in an electric squall, sounds like the kind of music Willie would rather not listen to, let alone make. And the hard-edged riffing on "$1000 Wedding" practically bludgeons the Gram Parsons song to death. While the three Nelson originals (two old, one new) all work fine, the rest is hit (Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah") and miss (the title cut, by Fleetwood Mac's Christine McVie). It has been said that Nelson can sing just about anything--which doesn't necessarily mean that he should. --Don McLeese

Review

.....this collaboration with Ryan Adams is Nelson's finest in a decade...the old troubadour can still write the best weepers around. -- Entertainment Weekly - 11/3 - A-

It's as enjoyable a pairing of worshipful rock whippersnapper and country legend as Jack White's collaboration with Loretta Lynn. -- Elle - November 2006 - Best of the Month, ISBN13: B000IFRQH2 ISBN10: B000IFRQH2 Material Type: audioCD