Of all the records
Willie Nelson made in the 1990s and since that time, none is more misunderstood or ignored than
Spirit. Coming as it did so quietly and unobtrusively in 1996, a year and a half before the celebrated
Teatro,
Spirit is
Willie's most focused album of that decade. Self-produced and featuring the sparest of instrumental settings --
Willie and
Jody Payne play guitars,
Bobbie Nelson plays piano, and
Johnny Gimble plays fiddle on certain tracks --
Nelson weaves a tapestry, a song cycle about brokenness, loneliness, heartbreak, spiritual destitution, and emerging on the other side. The set begins with the instrumental "Matador," which seems to usher in the atmospheric texture for this album. "She's Gone" tells its heartbreak story with as much lilt and pastoral grace as is possible without being sentimental.
Willie's guitar soloing is gorgeous; he's deep in the groove of the washes of
Bobbie's chords. Hearing a steel-string guitar play rhythm and a nylon-string guitar play lead is an interesting twist as well. But
Nelson digs the notion of "She's Gone" deeper into the listener's consciousness with "Your Memory Won't Die in My Grave": "Been feelin' kinda free/But I'd rather feel your arms around me/Because you're takin' away/Everything I ever wanted..../It's a memory today, it'll be a memory tomorrow/I hope you're happy someday/"Your memory won't die in my grave...." And when
Nelson moves to the full acceptance issue as he does on "I'm Not Trying to Forget You," the music is slightly off-kilter in the intro, as if the singer cannot come to grips with the song.
Payne plays just behind
Willie, stretching time, making it slip and shimmer all the way into "Too Sick to Pray," the most devastating country waltz to be recorded since
Johnny Paycheck's Little Darlin' albums. On "I'm Waiting Forever" and "We Don't Run," the sun begins to rise out of the heart's bleak night and comes to the dawn of a new day in the life of love and spiritual connection. This is
Nelson writing conceptually as he did early on with
Phases and Stages and
Red Headed Stranger, but he is at his understated best here, moving deeply into the skeleton of the song itself and what it chooses to reveal through the singer. And while
Spirit is quiet, it's a tough, big record that makes you confront the roar of silence in your own heart. ~ Thom Jurek