This may be Willie Nelson’s 79th solo studio album, and his 156th in all, but despite such prodigious and prolific writing, the Red Headed Stranger is still a minimalist in his 93rd year. Case in point: Dream Chaser’s 10 tracks clock in at half an hour, and they’re each as astute, funny and affecting as ever.
Title song and album opener “Dream Chaser” lasoos Bobby Tomberlin into the very well-oiled Cannon-Nelson writing team, for a sweet bout of lossless reflection, while “Fly Away”, penned by Cannon and Bobby Whitlock, is a sweet, spare heart-breaker. The more intimate, gravelly vocal of “We’d Make a Good Movie”, with it’s sad, witty chorus – classic Willie – sits well with his guitar Trigger’s grace notes, and his punctuations and runs throughout the whole set are as deft and as warming as ever.
“I Can’t Read Your Mind” is Willie’s first co-write with Bob Dylan (and Buddy Cannon) since “Heartland” in the early Nineties, and the result of Dylan touring with Willie on last year's Outlaws shows. It’s a funny, sly lyrical ballad with a nice hook, the spirits of miscommunication, yearning and confusion blending in their songwriting to a tasty sauce of emotional complexity.
In many a dim-lit room, there will be discussions as to to whether there are enough whiskey songs in the world. Willie has an answer. Cannon and Tomberlin’s “Whiskey Wants Me To” may be a smaller tributary of “Whiskey River” but it’s still worth sippin’.
His co-write with Cannon in “Wonder What I’m Gonna Do” is lean, languid and lonely, softened by Mickey Raphael’s signature harmonica, as is “After All”, a spiky rockabilly run-in with regret leavened by that signature dry wit and a lovely band performance. He ends the show with the George Jones song, “Developing My Pictures”, and you realise you’ve just spent a flawless and hugely enjoyable half-hour you want to spin again, and it's one that will really make your day.
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