HI FI Times 1.8

HI FI Times 1.8

ALBUM REVIEW: Kris Kristofferson | The Austin Sessions

You know most of these songs in one way or another. You have listened to them while you were growing up or heard them in your prime. Nothing has prepared you for this other than a dream that it might happen. Yes, your dreams have been realized, some of the best country songs ever written, striped down and delivered like they should have been, but never were, until now.

“For the good times…”
Hit play and you are “Busted flat in Baton Rouge waitin’ for a train…”

And you cannot know why they ever did it any other way. The harp is so direct and the mandolin is so syrupy that it is clear that there never has been a better version than this. You can hear the hard strum -- the really hard strum of the guitar and mandolin and you know they are feeling it – really feeling it. Things get serious and you know the shit is hitting hard -- stripped down yet full and real. Kris has a low whisky voice that cannot be described and the mix has a low and dangerous feel to it. I can’t put my finger on it…

“But there’s something in a Sunday
Makes a body feel alone…”

An organ greets us and we don’t have much time before the ultimate break up song hits us like a fucking brick not in the heart but in the gut. The organ comes back and then we know it’s over.

“Lay your head upon my pillow
Hold your warm and tender body close to mine
Make believe you love me one more time
For the good times…”

And by this time, most would be happy to have nothing more. However, those are the ones that leave at half time, before the encore, or in the middle of the set. A definitive version of the “Silver Tongued Devil” that makes me understand the song for the first time “Help Me Make It Through the Night” is done up-tempo and hard fucking core, not all slow and maudlin. Never saw it coming. Beauty is reflected in the reading of “Loving Her Was Easier” and we fall into a slow and soft place that we believe will never end. Harp, piano, organ and steel guitar…

And now we go there
The place he knows
Getting out of the cold
Keeping his guitar safe
Hungry and thirsty
Nothing is safe
And we all bring peace
The crap is all over
The poet is the barkeep
The prophet is on the barstool
The only thing that waits for us is
Death and the devil
Beat the devil and you have beaten death… today anyway
The only place we go to make our peace
Is in our sleep

“And the meaning doesn’t matter.”

The steel guitars cry their lonesome call
The mandolin drifts in and out

“Why me lord…”

And Kris sings his heart out as the sun slowly turns blood orange as it sets on the west ocean. You can feel the salty breeze and see the breaking waves crashing. There are a precious few of us that know the feeling of sitting on a board looking out at the Pacific waiting for the next set. Kris knows this feeling and somehow shows it to us without ever bringing it up. You want to hear the best country LP ever recorded? Check this one out. In fact, if you had no other country music in your collection and a country music fan came over to your pad, you could play them this and they would think you were the coolest of the cool and if they didn’t, they really weren’t country music fans after all, were they?

Catch you on the flip boys and girls. -mke