Gifted with a voice that is equal parts fine grain, rich honey and
uncovered ache, Kelly Willis has never delivered a record that does
her justice. The closest she's come is probably What I
Deserve, her eclectic 1999 debut for Rykodisc and coming-out
party after a trio of inconsistent country albums for MCA in the
early '90s (anthologized nicely on the "One More Time" compilation.)
In listening to Easy, her follow-up to What I Deserve,
the question that continually arises is how can a singer who so
consistently transcends her material be so dependent upon the
strength of her songs in crafting a full album?
What I Deserve benefited from a series of inspired co-writes
from Gary Louris of The Jayhawks, a raw, obscure Replacements cover
("They're Blind"), and a great folk-rocker penned by Willis' husband,
Austin singer/songwriter Bruce Robison ("Not Forgotten You"). But
what still impresses me about that album is the way Willis owns every
lyric. After digesting Easy for more than a month, that hasn't
changed; it's clear that what's missing on it is tempo and lyrical
bite. You'd be forgiven for failing to notice that the first time
around, because when you hear Willis wrap her voice around even a
minimum-wage song like "Not What I Had In Mind," all questions of
quality go out the window. The lady has a captivating way with a
lyric and, even with the least revealing songs of her career,
delivers her most knowing, intimate vocals.
Like Randy Travis, another all-world singer whose albums are usually
dotted with crap, Willis redeems even the most ordinary lyrics on a
regular basis. As a result, her entire oeuvre is worth hearing even
if the miracles in her voice are often too much for the rest of the
albums, musicians, and songwriters to match. You'll never regret time
spent with a Kelly Willis record, but save What I Deserve,
none will ever be a desert-islander, either.
All Willis albums have one overarching theme: love. That
single-minded focus threatens to limit Willis' artistic growth,
because while she's adept at exploring the vagaries of her subject of
choice, she's not giving herself the chance to investigate new
topics. Two or three albums down the road, there may not be new
ground to cover in the lover-scorned, failed-romance,
can't-get-over-you landscape. If you're going to do nothing but love
songs, you need them to be emotionally complex; and with few
exceptions, these aren't.
Compounding that, Easy is too stately, too well behaved and
Nashville country for its own good. Chuck Prophet plays some nice
acoustic guitar and the sound is warm and clear (and distinctly
country-soul, whereas What I Deserve showed more of a
commitment to rock 'n' roll) but the playing is too mannered. Remove
Willis' sly vocal track from her cover of Marcia Ball's "Find Another
Fool" and you'll be hard pressed to separate the backing track from
most of what is coming out of Nashville these days. The mood rarely
varies from downbeat, and when it does the results aren't always
pretty. "You Can't Take It With You," a banjo-driven Paul Kelly
cover, is jarring but doesn't drum up any excitement. Willis' vocals
are better framed by thick electric guitars or folk strumming than
old-school country instrumentation anyway. In fact, she might be best
served by a batch of dramatically arranged power ballads.
The gems on Easy are those that are most forthright in their
beats and composition; their scarcity suggests Willis is running up
against the limits of her approach. Still, even as I'm frustrated by
most of the cuts here, there are two that always run me right over:
"What Did You Think," another Robison classic that's simple without
being clichéd ("What did you think that I could say to you/
That you ain't heard/ Wondering what in the world do I know about
love") and which has such a warm and inviting first 40 seconds I find
myself repeating it again and again, and a fun romp through Kristy
MacColl's "Don't Come the Cowboy With Me Sonny Jim!"
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