Willie Nelson
★★★★ A Beautiful Time SONY LEGACY. CD/DL/LP
His 71st solo original album, released on his 89th birthday. JUST SINCE signing with Legacy in 2012 Willie Nelson has sold over 1 million albums, and his last three of largely original material, from 2018’s Last Man Standing, stack up against most records from his ’70s purple patch. Many of these originals, as always co-written with Buddy Cannon, abstractly look back on Nelson’s legacy from the far side of 80. It comes in three distinct types: the front porch wisdom of Dusty Bottles (“Memories are made to sip and savour/ And dusty bottles pour a finer glass of wine”); looking forward to big ol’ pickin’ parties with fallen comrades, “Waylon, John and Kris, and our sweetheart Patsy Cline”; and the Sturgill Simpsonlike cosmic philosophising of Energy Follows Thought. Alongside covers of Leonard Cohen’s Tower Of Song and The Beatles’ With A Little Help From My Friends, it’s another later-life triumph.