New Music Review

Kris Kristofferson

Closer to the Bone
New West Records

CD (Deluxe Edition)

It was only a couple weeks ago that I got wind of a new Kris Kristofferson album. As a matter of fact, I was completely oblivious to the fact the he put out an album called This Old Road in 2006. To be perfectly honest, I hadn't really given much thought to the man in quite some time. I thought of him as a legendary singer-songwriter who was essentially retired, but still acts in movies sometimes. That changed one afternoon when I was listening to WMLB on my ride home. I heard a song that for the first time in a while made me wonder: "this is great; what the fuck is it?" I was rather surprised to hear that it was new material from Mr. Kristofferson. Ever since that moment, I had been anxiously awaiting this release until yesterday afternoon, when I was finally able to pick it up.

And it didn't disappoint.

Closer to the Bone is, in many ways, a tremendous piece of work by an old master of his craft. Kris Kristofferson is one of the most prolific songwriters of all time, and he's only released new material sporadically for the last couple of decades. I don't know if this has been because he's lacked inspiration, if he felt a desire to self-edit, or he was just too busy making Blade movies. He hasn't made anything this good in quite a long time.

Ever since Rick Rubin struck gold with Johnny Cash in the 90's, it seems like every producer out there has been trying to do a stripped down record with an aging Country star. It's a classic example of throwing a bunch of stuff at the wall to see what sticks. Don Was isn't going to see anywhere near the record sales or critical acclaim that Rubin had with the man in black, but when this year is in the books, he may have been the man behind the board for the best album of 2009. He made one that sticks to the wall, and he played the bass on it, to boot.

Closer to the Bone opens with a titular track, and it's one of the best cuts on the disc. It features backing vocals by Stephen Bruton, longtime Kristofferson guitarist who passed away not long after recording finished, and multiple media outlets mistook it for an uncredited Bob Dylan. "Closer to the Bone" does a great job of setting the tone for the album that bears its name. It's raw, it's personal, it's musically minimalistic, and lyrically it's better than 99 per cent of recording artists could ever dream of being.

This record contains songs about love ("From Here to Forever", "The Wonder", "Starlight and Stone), songs about loss ("Hall of Angels", "Love Don't Live Here Anymore"), songs about friends ("Good Morning John", "Let the Walls Come Down") and a very well written song about Sinead O'Connor ("Sister Sinead") of all people. My favorite on this record is "Tell Me One More Time"; a bluesy number with a hint of gospel influence to it and the best lyrics on the whole album:

Girl I guess I've been forgiven

I've acquired a taste for living

Just when I was close to giving up the ghost

That pretty much sums the whole record up. In many ways, this is an album about growing old, written by a man who's growing old. The only downside to this record, if it has one at all, is that there is only so much you can do with a 73 year old man's voice. Maybe the music and the melodies are simple because they needed to be. Whether or not that was the case, it seems to work just fine on this record, at least for my tastes.

Kris Kristofferson proved on this record that he's still better than most as a songwriter. And he may not have a youthful set of vocal pipes anymore, but he can still sing well enough to get the job done; that's probably because, unlike most singer-songwriters, he actually has something significant to say. If he wants to call it quits and never put anything else out, I would understand and respect that. But Closer to the Bone is definitely a record that has left me wanting more, and moments like that are hard to come by these days. I think we need all of the Kristofferson we can get, and we need it in the form of new albums of original material, not Blade sequels.

P.S. - I would highly recommend the Deluxe Edition of this CD, if you're able to get your hands on it. It comes with a bonus disc of a live concert from Dublin that occurred in 2008. It has a great rendition of "Sunday Mornin' Comin Down".