Willie Nelson – A Beautiful Time Review

Legacy artists, as Rod Argent of The Zombies put it, struggle to get the playtime their heyday once offered. Willie Nelson has careered on through those twilight years with a solid set of albums. They are not just consistent with his earliest works, they are still as sincere and interesting. A Beautiful Time will do nothing to challenge the ageism inherent to the legacy artist’s piece, but it is a matter of making comfort with that, for the hope that someone new is going to stumble onto the music. Nelson has enjoyed much time at the top of his game, and this, A Beautiful Time, is absolutely fine. It depends entirely on the vocal strengths that have held firm to Nelson and his country essentials.

Opening track I’ll Love You Till The Day I Die is an absolutely fine lament, a clear and soppy track that leaves little mark. But it is the same for all the tracks. My Heart Was A Dancer is a sappy number that relies on acoustic melodies that will absolutely work for anyone who has engaged with Nelson on more than a handful of his better-known tracks. That second track shows an electronic tuning to Nelson’s voice, a lack of confidence in those twilight years as he tries to hit those high notes. Still, it is not often that this comes to a noticeable front. Energy Follows Thought is a nice enough track, as introspective and melodic as it gets for A Beautiful Time. That third track focuses more on the gentler instrumentals, a quality inevitability found throughout this album.

Reflecting on legacy very nicely on the album high Dreamin’ Again is a simple and well-tuned moment of questioning from Nelson. Articulating whether his music is touching anyone is not a fear for a man who has marked many records on the long and winding road. I Don’t Go To Funerals feels short and fairly slick, if forgettable. These are solid country tracks, more of the same safety that comes with sticking around the roots of a genre for so long and retiring those expectations of jazz or reggae innovation that litter Nelson’s career. Texas generalities, station wagon clichés and nothing particular about cementing some new legacy for the genre. It is all fundamental and unfortunate that Nelson’s writing becomes so typical. It is the hard-drinking cowboy, and such a novel concept has lived and died a thousand deaths. A lack of innovation comes as a drawback for the potential on show throughout some consistently solid mixing. Still, those laments are well-expressed on the likes of Dusty Bottles and Live Every Day.

Many are impressed at the quality that comes with age, as though that is some sort of detriment that reduces the abilities of an artist. It is the well of inspiration that dries up, the imagination, and that has little, if anything, to do with age. Johnny Cash made some of the best music of his career at the very end of it. So too does Nelson, between this and the consistency of First Rose of Spring. Straightforward country ballads that feel a bit homebrew, a bit personal, but much of it lacks the powerful surge of beauty Nelson often sprinkles into his music. Poker, drinking, and resplendent country living brought to life. Maybe the stereotypes are firm truth more than anything else. It is hard to tell, but Nelson makes a convincing enough time of it with A Beautiful Time.