Willie Nelson is showing no signs of slowing down at 91 years old. On Friday he's releasing “The Border,” which Texas Monthly magazine says is his 152nd album in a career of more than 60 years. He leans into Mexican-inflected sounds filtered through the music of his native Texas.
While his last studio album, “Bluegrass,” explored the music of Kentucky, the new one — produced by longtime collaborator Buddy Cannon and released by Sony’s Legacy Recordings on streaming, CD and vinyl — is firmly planted in his native Texas and its stark southern borderlands.
That includes the stark, dark, title track, written by Nelson favorite Rodney Crowell with Allen Shamblin and sung from the perspective of a Border Patrol agent. It begins like a Western with a standoff between the law and the cartels.Willie Nelson’s Fourth of July Picnic lands in the Philadelphia area for the first timeBut then comes a shift, when the agent despairs for his life and his family and empathizes with the people he takes into custody.
Elsewhere he employs the jazz-inspired vocals, developed decades ago, that have served him so well in his elder years, like a pitcher who has lost his fastball but can still get guys out with change-ups and curves. There’s not a bad song in the bunch. If there’s fault to be found with “The Border,” it’s that the stark desert tone established in the beginning isn’t sustained, and at times it swerves from bluesy rockers to country shuffles that are downright breezy.
Texas Mexico Rodney Crowell Entertainment E Music Border Security Allen Shamblin Classical Music
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