"Delightful", "Refreshing" and "Emotive" would be words that I would use to describe this great new offering by Kelly Willis on Rykodisc. This album is produced by Kelly Willis and Gary Paczosa. Mastered by Doug Sax, one of America's best. Notable guests include Lloyd Maine's on different instruments, Bruce Robison (Kelly's Husband), Dan Tyminski and Alison Krauss. Kelly wrote 4 of the songs and co-wrote 2 of the songs. One song was penned by Bruce Robison.
This recording shimmers, one of the best acoustic recordings I've ever heard, sparse, but full sounding, very natural sounding. Credit a lot of this to Doug Sax who has done mastering for Alison Krauss and also did "Home" for the Dixie Chicks, a similar type album.
Kelly sings with confidence, emotion, a great bunch of songs, sounds very comfortable with the material. What sticks out is her beautiful twangy voice with kudos to 2 great acoustic guitarists Chuck Prophet and Mark Spencer. This CD should make all country music lovers happy, from traditionalists to Nashville Country. It is just great acoustic country music, which seems to be becoming more popular.
It is a short CD, only 36 minutes long, we all know a CD can hold a lot more, but I sort of liked the feeling the CD gave me, it left me wanting more, not a bad song to be found, not a wasted riff.
It's hard to find a favorite song for me, everything is so good. Really did like the original opener "If I left you", an upbeat ballad with a beautiful melody and awesome guitar parts. Also, another original stuck out" Not what I had in mind", original haunting ballad with Alison Krauss on background vocals. One more song I have to mention is "You can't take it with you", a blue grassy flavored song. Looking forward to more like this from Kelly.
Jim
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