Product Description

No Description Available.
Genre: Popular Music
Media Format: Compact Disk
Rating:
Release Date: 23-FEB-1999

Track Listing

1. Take Me Down
2. What I Deserve
3. Heaven Bound
4. Talk Like That
5. Not Forgotten You
6. Wrapped
7. Cradle of Love
8. Got a Feelin' for Ya
9. Time Has Told Me
10. Fading Fast
11. Happy With That
12. They're Blind
13. Not Long for This World

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #127846 in Music
• Brand: WILLIS,KELLY
• Released on: 1999-02-23
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: .25 pounds

Amazon.com
Kelly Willis's first full-length offering since 1993 is one of the better country records you will hear, alternative or otherwise. She covers tunes by the likes of Paul Westerberg, Nick Drake, and Paul Kelly, and cowrites with the Jayhawks' Gary Louris and John Leventhal. If none of the songs quite rises to the heights of the Steve Earle, Jim Lauderdale, and Joe Ely material on her 1991 masterpiece Bang Bang, it is still solid stuff nonetheless. Any new song by Dan Penn ("Got a Feelin' for Ya", cowritten with Chuck Prophet) is already worth the price of admission, but Willis herself penned what may be the best tune here, "Talk Like That," an ode to the comfort of a familiar accent far from home. What I Deserve was recorded on a tight budget without a record deal, which may be why the backing, though well played (especially by guitarist Prophet), verges on sounding unfinished--or, it may be the alternative-country sound she was intentionally seeking. Either way, Willis's sublime voice and delivery reside on a more sophisticated plane. If listening to her throaty warbling of Nick Drake's "Time Has Told Me" or her sultry rendering of the Penn tune doesn't give you "chicken skin," it is time to check your pulse. --Michael Ross

New York Times
She offers painful tales of lost love but then expresses the resolve to move on. Hovering between romantic fantasy and deflated realism, Ms. Willis taps a rare subtlety of feeling.

Entertainment Weekly
[Willis] artfully meld[s] the sturm und twang of her country upbringing with the plaintive grit of roots rock.

Customer Reviews

What Kelly Willis Desrves is a Bigger Audience
This is the best mainstream country album of 1999. Hands down, no argument. Kelly Willis performs the same kind of country music as the Dixie Chicks. Why she is not more popular is a mystery. "What I Deserve" is an absolute gem in which Willis brings out the best in songs written by others, including her husband, Bruce Robison. Highlights include "Wrapped," "Not Forgotten You," and "Cradle of Love." Willis's voice is as fine as country music has to offer and she manages to avoid the slick production that ruins many modern Nashville products.

If you like this album, check out Bruce Robison's "Wrapped" which features the song of the same name. It'll give you a completely different perspective.

A superbly realized album by unique country/rock singer
When MCA and A&M were unable to market Willis to commercial radio, the Austinite struck out on her own to record this brilliant fourth album. A subsequent deal with Ryko has resulted in the most solid release of her career. Her voice retains the country flavor of earlier albums, but the songlist and style have expanded, eluding such simple classification.

Willis' confidence as a songwriter has grown, as she contributes five new titles and a reworking of her little-heard "Fading Fast." Her songs emphasize the exquisite dichotomy of her voice: world-weariness delivered with an unfailing resolve to hang on. Whether it's a lost lover or the loneliness of misplaced family roots, she walks the edge between recovery and disaster, unable to find the former and unwilling to fully give herself up to the latter. In addition to her own works, she picks thoughtfully from the catalogs of Bruce Robison, Damon Bramlett and Paul Kelly, and less successfully from the works of Nick Drake and Paul Westerberg.

What Willis clearly deserves is the critics-darling reception afforded Lucinda Williams, and the popular acclaim (and sales) rung up by heavily groomed hacks from Nashville's factories.

Loosely country, completely enchanting
Such an amazing voice from such a slight body! Kelly Willis has wowed critics and listeners alike since her return to the music scene with What I Deserve. The album is her strongest ever -- perhaps because of the amazing songwriting talents who contribute, such as her immesnely talented husband Bruce Robison and the intense Damon Bramblett (both of whose CD's I highly recommend as well). Kelly's album is a fit for anyone who appreciates good music -- it's country in the loosest sense -- don't buy it if you expect good ol' Nashville rhinestone twang. I would also recommend a live Kelly show to anyone, though she'll be off the touring circuit for a while because of the upcoming birth of her baby. So in the meantime, buy this album, sing along (it's impossible not to), and enjoy alternative, small-label country at it's finest.