The Sound In Your Mind

Following the release of his masterful concept album *Red Headed Stranger*, Willie Nelson returned to the studio to, as Willie explained to one interviewer, “do some songs we already do that people like to hear when we’re on the road.” A rollicking take on Lefty Frizzell’s “If You’ve Got the Money I’ve Got the Time” reflects the band’s roadhouse energy, but the album is mostly a showcase of low-burning ballads — the kind of sweetly forlorn songs that come at the very end of a long, lonely night. “A Penny for Your Thoughts” and “Thanks Again” are quintessential beer-joint torch songs, inched along on little more than the twinkle of Bobbie Nelson’s piano and the soft rap of Paul English’s drumkit. Included here is arguably the sweetest, weariest version of “Amazing Grace” ever recorded, as well as a brilliantly understated medley of “Funny How Time Slips Away,” “Crazy” and “Night Life.” But the centerpiece is undoubtedly the title song. Over a spacious, sleepy track Nelson sings the refrain —“But remember my love is the sound that you hear in your mind”— which gives way to a wounded guitar solo, as plain as the crack in an ancient sidewalk.

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Red Headed Stranger propelled Willie Nelson to stardom, finally giving him a smash hit, yet its spare arrangements and hushed intimacy were a bit of an anomaly, both in his prior work and the albums that followed on Columbia.