A theme album is an inherently venturesome exercise. Those who attempt them are kindred spirits with those authors who wonder, "why stop at a short story when I could write a whole novel"? Yes, the payoff might be greater, but likewise the heartache should the enterprise come up short of its mark. Given the ambitious temperaments from which these albums arise, it should come as no shock that - as artistic endeavors - their concepts or executions (or both) often get muddled somewhere along the way. On paper, a country music theme album about a broken relationship begs the question, "Isn't that what all country music albums are about?" In practice, however, Willie Nelson's Phases & Stages is so much more than the sum of its parts. For one, he provides a rich context for his songs. Think of all those great LPs with their honky-tonk hymns to horseplay and lover's laments sitting side by side. The same man crying into his whiskey breakfast this morning was bird-dogging through his beer goggles last night, without the dimmest understanding of how the two situations are related. Phases starts out with a tableau of sad domesticity: the woman scorned is washing the dishes and doing the laundry. But all of it, all those little chores that go into making a house a home feel hollow in the calm before that home is broken. Nelson's voice is tender on these tracks - the soft and sensitive croon he would use to great effect years later when interpreting American pop standards on his 1978 album Stardust. As he recounts the story of the woman finally fed up enough to leave, something subtle happens as the track sequencing unfolds. Each song is just a little bit faster than the one that preceded it. The color is returning to her cheeks as she heads on home to her mother and little sister, who wryly notes, "Mama's gonna let her sleep the whole day long / The mirror's gonna tell her how long she's been gone." This rejuvenation picks up more speed still as she heads on down to the "corner beer joint" to dance, even though "her jeans fit a little bit tighter than they did before." Then, presumably after meeting a fella out on the town, things slow back down as she contemplates falling in love again. It's not that she's jaded and afraid to trust another man so much as she's upside-down, distrustful of her own feelings, like the workings of her own heart have become a mystery to her. Then, "Bloody Mary Morning" comes crashing through the gates of dawn and the album switches gears. It leads with a rollicking banjo that - like the French horns announcing the arrival of the lupine threat in Sergey Prokofiev's "Peter and the Wolf" - can only mean we're about to hear from the man she left behind. This is followed by the rapid-fire 1-2 combo of a pedal steel guitar and rowdy roadhouse piano. Not only is it the best song on the album, but it serves as a much-needed PR boost for the cheating husband, the tune's roguish, outlaw charm helping the listener to understand what she saw in him in the first place. Just as her suite is characterized by a steady increase in tempo, his progressively slows to a crawl, as the reality of his situation sobers him up. Again, context is everything. His denials of the situation ("I Still Can't Believe You're Gone," "It's Not Supposed To Be That Way") are all the more affective when the listener knows the back story. In this way, ordinary songs are anchored by an emotional heft that might have otherwise gotten lost in translation. If you haven't heard it yet, I won't spoil the ending except to say that the pedal steel and piano show up again on "Heaven and Hell," perhaps signifying that our male protagonist's attempt at reform has met with something rather less than success. In the end, I'm not sure if he ever gets it. But, thanks to Willie's masterful storytelling, I do. Grade: A
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