Kelly Willis -- "What I Deserve"

Like a long slow dance on a hot summer night, "What I Deserve" is one of those beautifully simple things you'll wish would never end. Lush, erotic, and just plain sexy, this album is a warm whisper in your ear during a carriage ride with your one true love-- an experience so utterly intoxicating that your heart will race, your knees will buckle, and your tongue will swell.

Well, that, at least, is the effect this incredible album has upon me (and upon several other people who have bought the album based on my gushing recommendation). I can't think of another album I've purchased in the past two or three years that more consistently gives me goosebumps or makes me break into a smile at the same points in the same songs time after time after time.

Willis struggled on the fringes of breakout success in the country music scene throughout the 1990s as part of a small wave of Texas-based singer songwriters which included folks like Lyle Lovett, Steve Earle, Nanci Griffith and others. Much like Lyle Lovett, Kelly's music straddles several musical categories, defying easy categorization while at the same time showing clear influence from all those various categories while trying to finally squeeze in somewhere between modern folk and traditional country.

While many of that group have become well-recognized stars in the "Americana" genre, Willis was always seen as having the potential to become The Next Big Thing in traditional country music. For whatever reason, however, major success eluded her. Dropped from her contract after recording three solid but unspectacular albums for MCA in the early 90's, Willis found herself without a record deal by the second half of a decade which had opened with so much hope and promise. But in a funny twist all too common in the music business, what seemed at first a setback proved eventually to be a liberation-- no longer penned in and held back by the commercial requirements and limitations of the traditional Nashville scene, Willis found herself in perfect position to finally create an album according to her own tastes. The long-overdue result is her outstanding 1999 release, "What I Deserve."

The opening song, "Take Me Down" (co-written by Willis and Gary Louris of the Jayhawks), gives a wonderful introduction to Willis's amazing voice. At once both sultry and soaring but with none of the self-indulgent showy vocal gymnastics all too common with many performers blessed with naturally great pipes, her singing seems as casual and unforced as that of bird. It's as if she merely opens her mouth and music comes out. While "Take Me Down" is the most up-tempo song on the album, it barely gets above an easy swinging sort of happy groove. Previous albums seemed always to include at least one rockabilly style romp, but on this album Willis gives notice right off the bat that she's content to stay mellow this time out.

The title song on track two is another Willis-Louris collaboration, and the song seems to describe exactly how Willis feels about her "failed" attempts at mainstream Nashville success:

Well I have done/ the best I can
Oh but what I've done/ It's not who I am
And oh what I deserve...

The song keeps coming back to the mantra-like title refrain, as if by sheer force of will she can hold back memories of all the disappointments of the past by focusing on what still remains of her dreams. Amazingly, it all comes off as uplifting despite never really describing anything other than heartbreak and failure because the strength and determination in her voice outweighs the doubt and weariness in her words. The character in the song seems to be singing about giving up, yet you know that she's stronger than even she realizes.

" Heaven Bound " is a beautiful simple song by Damon Bramblett, where Willis sings to a fallen friend:

Calling all cars, one less dog behind bars, one less man in pain
It hurts to see you go but darling don't you know we're so glad you came

Again we find a song delivering an ironic impact as it soothes and uplifts despite dealing exlcusively with issues of loss and sadness, and again I have to credit the singing. If it's possible to hear someone smiling supportively in a song, I swear I can on this track. Willis seems to be vocally holding your hand through the grief she describes, helping you to come out the other side stronger and happier.

Known primarily as a vocalist, "What I Deserve" marks a change for Willis as she pens several of her own songs on the album. Her song "Talk Like That" describes how a sea of memories can be summoned up by something as simple as a familiar accent in a partner's voice:

Well I can hear my father/ And his Oklahoma drawl
I hear my Grandmother/ Oh I can hear them all
And oh when you talk like that
I know where I'm from
And how it takes me back
When you talk some

Sung beautifully over a slow quiet two-step shuffle, the song seems like a long hug of a dance with a favorite grandparent: warm and comforting and protective.

"Not Forgotten You" was written by Bruce Robison, one of the great under-appreciated songwriters working today. Robison also just happens to be married to Kelly Willis, and their marriage seems to have worked wonders for both their careers-- this album by Willis shows a newfound confidence, while Robison's recent work has been consistently excellent. Willis sings here (with Bruce on harmony) of a lost love and its painful aftermath:

Time flies and you just know
Time to think about letting go
Times I even forgot to be blue

Big feet to shuffle them sands
Leave no trail and slip right through your hands
Done every little thing I know to do

Another Bruce Robison song follows, and it might be the greatest pure love song I've heard in the past 5-10 years. "Wrapped" was the title cut of Bruce's '98 release, but where his version was simply a cleverly-told tale of a country boy in love, Kelly's soars to another level, seemingly describing the greatest love ever felt anywhere. There is a verse in the middle of Kelly's version of this song that has never yet failed to make me break into a teary wide smile with its pure passion and honesty:

"It feels like ages since you lay down in my arms
I see no good reason still I'm tangled in your charms
My God you smiling
And you catch my eye
My heart is pounding deep inside"

Laid over a gentle loping shuffle, the song brings to mind pictures of happy couples holding hands while walking in the surf, yet it does so while remaining completely devoid of any false emotion or saccharine artifice. The descriptions of the simple joy of being head over heels in love seems so sincere in both the words and performance that you cannot help but smile. For my money, this one song alone is well worth the price of the entire album.

The entire album if filled with songs that seem like slow dances between lovers. In "Cradle of Love" Willis sings: So baby come on over / And lean your head on me / Here in my arms now / is where you're meant to be. Every song on the album boasts a confident mature sense of intimacy refreshing in comparison to what passes for popular romantic music today. That confidence builds to a fever in "Got A Feelin' For Ya," a sultry song where Willis makes her desires perfectly clear to her one true love:

But hold on tight, let it roll right over you
You should know I'd never do you no harm
'Cause I got a feelin' for ya / A real deep feelin'

Where "Wrapped" sings about the purity of true love, this hilariously sexy song just growls about an entirely different aspect of true love. If this song doesn't bring a smile to your lips, then you need a good cardiologist, cuz friend, you must be dead.

In "Time Has Told Me" Willis again seems to be reflecting upon her unfulfilling experiences in Nashville when she sings:

So leave the ways that are making you be
What you really don't want to be
Leave the ways that are making you love
What you really don't want to love."

The worst lies are usually the ones we tell ourselves, but often it takes years of stumbling blindly to find that the path we are on is not the path that will take us where we want to be. With her career now seemingly headed where she always wanted, Willis sings this song with hard-won experience and conviction. Those same feelings seem to run through "Fading Fast" when she says "And so I'm leaving here on every cent I can borrow / Lord only knows just where I'll be tomorrow." Eventually you realize that any place is better than the wrong place, so an uncertain tomorrow beats a repeat of an unhappy yesterday. And just in case you still haven't yet figured out that Kelly Willis has washed her hands of her earlier musical forays, in "Happy With That" she laments that "Sometime life can be hard when you / Give love but no one will take it."

It's not as if Kelly Willis is the first (or the last) person for whom commercial success has been elusive. Almost all artists eventually face the difficulty of trying to find a willing buyer for their unique vision in a marketplace that seems only to want more of what is already on sale. Paul Westerberg, lead singer and songwriter for the great 80's rock band The Replacements, likely had those very difficulties in mind when he wrote and recorded "They're Blind" nearly a decade ago, and his writing rings as true for Willis today as it did for The Mighty 'Mats back then. When Willis moans "All the things you hold dearly / are scoffed at and yearly / judged once then tossed aside," you sense the frustration she must have felt while struggling to get to this point in her career. The fact that she-- once Nashville's great hope-- describes this frustration through a song from one of the most notoriously rowdy and hell-raising bands in the history of rock & roll, speaks volumes about where she'd like to see her career head from here on out. A typical radio-friendly country singer would never cover a song by The Replacements, and Willis seems to be saying "You're absolutely right."

"What I Deserve" is nothing short of a miraculous breakthrough for Kelly Willis. While she's always been known as having the voice (in the physical sense) to be a success, for too many years she struggled to find her artistic voice. Possibly too accommodating to attempts by Nashville producers to "mainstream" her, she languished for the better part of a decade, and only with this release has she finally re-discovered the singer she wants to be. A gorgeous album by one of the most beautiful voices in music, "What I Deserve" and Kelly Willis deserve a listen by music fans everywhere. This album rates my strongest possible recommendation.