CD REVIEWS

Willie Nelson, Tina Marsh, Awesome Color

'Complete Atlantic Sessions' set is vintage Willie

Monday, June 19, 2006

Willie Nelson

'The Complete Atlantic Sessions'

(Rhino)

All his life, producer Jerry Wexler has been in search of unique American voices. After producing timeless hits for Atlantic and Stax Records with Aretha Franklin, Ray Charles, Sam & Dave and Wilson Pickett, he found another of those voices in Willie Nelson. For his part, upon encountering Wexler at a Nashville party in the early '70s, Nelson said, "I've been looking for you for a long time."

Thus, Nelson embarked on one of his most creative periods, chronicled in full on this three-disc set. The two albums he recorded for Atlantic's short-lived Nashville division, 1973's "Shotgun Willie" and "Phases and Stages" the following year, marked his declaration of independence from the Nashville machine and staked out his turf as godfather of Austin's nascent progressive-country scene.

Blending Bob Wills beer-joint classics alongside songs by rock icon Leon Russell, and incorporating R&B horns and rock urgency, "Shotgun Willie" set the template for much of Nelson's boundary-crossing work to come.

"Phases and Stages" was not the first country concept album (that honor might go to Nelson's 1971 opus "Yesterday's Wine"), but it is groundbreaking nonetheless, telling the story of a divorce from each side of the male/female divide. Several of Nelson's finest and most enduring songs, including "Bloody Mary Morning," "Pick Up the Tempo" and "I Still Can't Believe You're Gone" help make up the song cycle.

Both albums include multiple outtakes, alternate versions and unreleased tracks of more interest to Nelson completists than the public at large.

The third disc is a live recording from a June 1974 set at the late-lamented Texas Opry House in Austin. The tracks find Nelson and his Family Band gaining their sea legs in front of a public that was just beginning to connect to the Willie phenomenon. Much of the set list is still familiar today, but it's worth hearing just to experience Nelson's blazing, unique guitar work on "Bloody Mary Morning," "Night Life" and "Shotgun Willie." —John T. Davis

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Tina Marsh

'Inside The Breaking: Volume I'

(CreOp Muse)

For the past 20 years, Austin jazz vocalist Tina Marsh has devoted herself primarily to expansive, avant-garde collaborations with the big band ensemble known as the Creative Opportunity Orchestra. But with "Inside the Breaking," Marsh steps away from big sound and big band and shares with us one of the most intimate and accessible and engaging albums of her career.

This is Marsh's "spare" album, her "melody" album. She pays homage to Rodgers and Hammerstein, visits the land of Sting and Leonard Cohen and sings three Puccini arias. The instrumentation is as stripped down and tasteful as it gets: Marsh on vocals, Eddy Hobizal on keyboards, and an occasional visit from Terry Muir on cello.

Yet for all the stylish and understated colors of the arrangements, "Inside the Breaking" blazes with artistry. Marsh's rendition of the Rodgers and Hart standard "Where or When" is like looking at the moon through shifting clouds — moods and meanings change with each line, with each passage. Her version of Ornette Coleman's "Lonely Woman" is more turbulent than wistful. You feel tremors in the song, in both the vocal and the piano arrangement.

Spare, yes. Simple, no. There's a lot going on this record, as one might suspect from an artist grounded so firmly in the jazz tradition. Marsh is very exacting in her intent, oh so precise in imbuing each word with its own story — so much so that it's easy, sometimes, to admire the sheer skill of the singer before getting into the soul of the song. That's what you get on "Inside the Breaking." Classic songs and a very skillful singer.

(Tina Marsh and the Creative Opportunity Orchestra, with special guest Boris Koslov from the Mingus Big Band, will perform 7:30 p.m. Sunday at the Laguna Gloria Amphitheatre.)

— Brad Buchholz

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Awesome Color

'Awesome Color'

(Ecstatic Peace)

What do we talk about when we talk about "heavy music"? Usually, something big and loud that gives off a sense of danger.

But just as often, we're talking about something that's weighed down. Take "Grown," the first track off Brooklyn-by-way-of-Michigan trio Awesome Color's self-titled debut album. It's six minutes of hard rock gambits — growls, howls, bursts of feedback, six-string shredding — that never get out from under the one-note drone that bassist Michael Troutman lays down from start to finish.

Just before the five-minute mark, singer-guitarist Derek Stanton whoops lustily, as if he's overcome something. But he's not really celebrating — he's letting go, relieved finally to admit that all the metal gestures in the world aren't enough to give this music any lift.

That's not an insult, just a description of Awesome Color's intent. The album (which was co-produced by Sonic Youth frontman Thurston Moore) sounds like a lot of different things — the MC5, early Captain Beefheart, the Stooges (fun fact: Stanton grew up across the street from Stooges guitarist Scott Asheton) — but it also sounds of a piece. All eight songs on "Awesome Color" seem to be thrashing beneath something massive and implacable. A hard rock, maybe.

(Awesome Color opens for Sonic Youth on Friday at Stubb's.)

— Jeff Salamon