Micah has pushed his father beyond a comfortable country oldie zone into some surprising places, whether digging out the philosophical essence of The Flaming Lips’ psychedelic epic Do You Realize?? or crystallising the weary heart of Beck’s Lost Cause. The framing of Nelson’s still tuneful but airy and cracked voice is gorgeous, with instruments weaving and whispering around him in a ghostly shimmer, a wheeze of accordion, a shiver and sigh of ethereal pedal steel guitar, a tumbling rumble of percussion. It is reminiscent of the atmospheric work Daniel Lanois did with Bob Dylan in the nineties, and notable that Lanois is playing pedal steel in the small ensemble. Micah contributes guitars, bass, piano, cello, dulcimer and Andean lute as well as joining in with percussion, with John Densmore of the Doors behind the drum kit keeping things gently tumbling. Everything is crystal clear yet understated, with Nelson’s famous guitar Trigger rippling and tickling his Django Reinhardt jazz country licks throughout.
It is not a sentimental album. Willie sells the hard-boiled sting of Keith Richards’s Robbed Blind and brings a bittersweet tang to Warren Zevon’s Keep Me In Your Heart. The pick of an excellent collection might be If It Wasn’t Broken, originally by obscure folk punk singer-songwriter Sunny War, which in Nelson’s delivery becomes an anthem of life lived to the full: “How would you know you had a heart / If it wasn’t broken?”
The only misstep is a playful version of Buffalo Springfield’s psychedelic whimsy Broken Arrow, yet in a way it adds to a sense of this album as a living experience between father and son happily trading guitar licks rather than a valedictory swansong. One of the greatest songwriters of his time, there is only one new offering from Willie, The Color of Sound (composed with Micah), on which Nelson embraces the mysteries of eternity with a song in his heart: “Listen / Here comes that silence again / Listen / The golden nothing …” If this was the last offering from the last outlaw standing, it would be a glorious way to bow out, but there is nothing here to suggest the great man is ready to hang up his guitar yet. Neil McCormick
Chromakopia, Tyler the Creator ★★★★☆
When Tyler the Creator made his mainstream breakthrough back in 2011 with Yonkers – a gloomy punk rap song where he promised to “stab Bruno Mars in his goddamn oesophagus”, ate a real cockroach in the music video, and was subsequently banned from entering the UK to perform by the then-home secretary, Theresa May, for “homophobic, hate-inciting lyrics” – there was a feeling hip hop had gained an eternal anarchist.
His artistic transformation over the past 13 years has been fascinating to observe. With 2017’s conceptual album Flower Boy, a career-best, Tyler seemed to meditatively “come out” over psychedelic soul reminiscent of The Isley Brothers. On 2019’s Igor, Tyler traced the roller-coaster ride of a break-up, the songs unsure if they longed for soppy reconciliation or a bitterness akin to Marvin Gaye’s infamous divorce LP, Hear My Dear. Now with eighth album Chromakopia, Tyler turns further inwards, dissecting the flawed human being behind an edgy rap persona. Amid tribal howls and a fidgety, battle-ready guitar riff reminiscent of Black Sabbath’s War Pigs, Tyler uses the brash Noid to complain about the pitfalls of celebrity. “I just want to eat in peace”, he raps, “Privacy, right? I got a better shot in the NBA.”