Produced by Don Was, "Feeling Mortal" is Kristoffersons' first release of new material in nearly 4 years. Musicians featured on the album are Mark Goldenberg on guitar, Sean Hurley on bass, Greg Leisz on pedal steel and guitars, Aaron Sterling on drums, Matt Rollings on keyboards and Sarah Watkins on violin and background vocals. Born in Texas and raised in a military family, he was a Golden Gloves boxer who studied creative writing at Pomona College in California. The Phi Beta Kappa graduate earned a Rhodes scholarship to study literature at Oxford, where he boxed, played rugby and continued to write songs. In 1965, Kristofferson turned down an assignment to teach at West Point and, inspired by songwriters like Willie Nelson and Johnny Cash, moved to Nashville to pursue his music. After struggling in Music City for several years, Kristofferson achieved remarkable success as a country songwriter at the start of the 1970s. His songs "Me and Bobby McGee," "Help Me Make It Through the Night," "Sunday Morning Coming Down," and "For the Good Times," all chart-topping hits, helped redefine country songwriting. By 1987, it was estimated that more than 450 artists had recorded Kristofferson's compositions.
Long-haired, liberal, and influenced as much by Bob Dylan as Hank Williams, Kris Kristofferson typified a new breed of country artist when he emerged as a successful singer-songwriter in the early-70s.
The author of such immortal Nashville standards as Help Me Make It Through the Night and Sunday Mornin’ Comin’ Down, this rugged poet also enjoyed a concurrent career as a film actor, which for many years threatened to overshadow his musical endeavours.
Thankfully, a sympathetic partnership with producer Don Was reignited his creative fortunes with 2006's well-received ‘comeback’ album This Old Road, and its equally impressive follow-up Closer to the Bone. Their hard-won themes are carried over into Feeling Mortal, which is apparently the final part of the Was/Kristofferson trilogy.
And what a curtain call. If this fine album turns out to be the 76-year-old Kristofferson's final release, then few could've asked for a more fitting valedictory statement.
Recorded in just three days – although much of the material was written years ago – the sound is sparse, spontaneous, warm and intimate, with Kristofferson accompanied by his own acoustic guitar and a few unobtrusive side-players. Never blessed with much vocal range, his baritone croon is even more cracked with age.
Yet he sings with such soulful conviction, fitting the wizened candour of these strong, memorable songs like a battered leather glove. Redolent in God-fearing spirit of the twilight recordings Johnny Cash made with producer Rick Rubin, Kristofferson's undisguised frailties provide an added depth and poignancy.
And yet despite its preoccupation with death, Feeling Mortal isn't, remarkably, a morbid album. A streak of warm-hearted defiance courses through the self-explanatory likes of You Don't Tell Me What to Do, with its ornery narrator doggedly brewing whisky and music for as long as his body will allow.
Elsewhere, the swaying celebration of Bread for the Body finds Kristofferson declaring: “Life is a song for the dying to sing / It's got to have feeling to mean anything.”
If any artist has earned the right to deliver his own eulogy, it's this indomitable country legend.
--Paul Whitelaw
Review
