Kris Kristofferson and producer Don Was seem to be taking up where Johnny Cash and Rick Rubin left off.

Like Cash, Kristofferson was fast becoming an anachronism before Was lent a sympathetic ear and an intuitive grasp of his public and private persona with 2006’s ‘This Old Road’. ‘Closer To The Bone’ follows a similar agenda, with Kristofferson, like Cash, cast as the stony old sage imparting stony old truths.

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As with Rick Rubin, Was keeps everything pruned back – in this case, the late Steve Bruton on mandolin, Jim Keltner on soft percussion, Was himself on upright bass – allowing Kristofferson ample room to breathe amid the most minimal of arrangements. These are gently rugged country-folk songs made all the more authentic by a chewy voice that, with age, now seems to have deepened its resolve.

This late flowering is clearly not lost on the 73-year-old. The Highwaymen first cut a scraggy demo of the title track in 1995, but this new setting makes it far more apt: “Ain’t it kinda funny /Ain’t it just the way, though/Ain’t you getting better/Running out of time.”

There are also tributes to his wife and family (“From Here To Forever”; “Holy Woman”), his old mate Cash (“Good Morning John”), and a particularly piquant one for Sinéad O’Connor (“Sister Sinéad”), in which he recounts the moment when, in 1992, “that bald-headed brave little girl” was hounded from the stage of Bob Dylan’s 30th Anniversary gig by fans still incensed by her tearing up the Pope’s photo on US TV.

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“Maybe she’s crazy and maybe she ain’t,” sings Kristofferson, ever the left-leaning champion of free debate, “But so was Picasso and so were the Saints/She’s never been partial to shackles or chains/She’s too old for breakin’ and too young to change.” It could have been written about Kris himself.

ROB HUGHES

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