Kris Kristofferson: Spooky Lady's Sideshow : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

Kris Kristofferson's renegade mystique has provoked unjustly harsh attacks from writers perhaps envious of his lifestyle. Such hostility precludes awareness of Kristofferson's humor. While on one level his songs tell of personal and social alienation, they also carry a strain of irony, his most down-and-out laments suggesting in their lyric indulgence and vocal intonation deliberate self-parody, a sense of the absurd.

The duality of Kristofferson's sensibility was nowhere so apparent as in the religious spoofs, "Jesus Was a Capricorn" and "Why Me" — jokes that many nevertheless took seriously. This dualism is evident, though more subtle, in Spooky Lady's Sideshow, perhaps the strongest album of his career and the first produced (by David Anderle) outside of Nashville.

Kristofferson's talent for phrasemaking highlights the first three cuts. In "Same Old Song" he says of success:

The bottom/Ain't so different from the top/ Just a few more friends that/You'll be losin' when you drop.

The three interlocking stories of "Broken Freedom Song" converge in the line: "No one's missing till you need 'em." And the chorus of "Shandy" shows Kristofferson at his self-satiric best, half wise, half jive:

'Cause nightmares are somebody's daydreams/Daydreams are somebody's lies/Lies ain't no harder than telling the truth/Truth is the perfect disguise.

Kristofferson develops the stardom theme in two other well-made songs, "One for the Money" and "Rock and Roll Time." The second, a gospel hymn coauthored with Bob Neuwirth and Roger McGuinn, envisages a heaven where "everyone's running on rock and roll time." Kristofferson plays with political nihilism in two sophisticated lyrics, "Star-Spangled Bummer" (aptly subtitled "Whores Die Hard") and "Rescue Mission," an imitation Scottish sea chanty (also coauthored with Neuwirth and McGuinn). With its striking tune and surrealistic imagery, "Rescue Mission" stands up well against its prototype, "Bob Dylan's 115th Dream." The album's finest moment is Larry Murray's beautiful "Lights Of Magdala." Kristofferson's rendition of this poetic ballad carries such conviction as to suggest that he should record more serious songs by other writers.

Kristofferson's handicaps are a narrow vocal range and a rudimentary harmonic sense that tend to make his own songs sound too much alike. Fortunately he has the good sense to work within, rather than trying to overcome, these limitations — the result being a droll modesty that engages more through lyric resourcefulness than musicality. His lyric ability is sufficient to ensure his continued status as an important contributor to the evolution of progressive country music.