Review Summary: Making the bed
Willie Nelson is getting fucking
old.
Just a few days shy of 85 and with his sixty-seventh studio record hot off the press, the day when we will have to face the fact that our weed loving, tax dodging country legend won’t be around much longer isn’t too far off.
Last Man Standing is depressing - perhaps too depressing even. The record drowns with the doom and gloom that time is running out, even if Willie Nelson’s humorous, light-hearted writing doesn't address it. One could easily boil down Last Man Standing as just another standard Nelson affair, and one that can be easily glossed over by non-fans or the barely curious. But what can’t be denied is the very real sense of awareness that things will be coming to an end which lingers over the audience’s head.
Between the lines of run-of-the-mill love ballads and cautionary life tales from your distant, friendly uncle, the cracks of the eventual comedown fade in. Atop a morbidly comedic arrangement of bounce guitar and bright keyboard, Nelson humors death on the title track and pays respects to fallen friends - and weighs in on the prospects of heaven and hell with the dismissive “bah humbug” of a person at peace with their time. But there are pauses here and there, breaks from the bounce of old-time Americana groove where realization falls into place; and how sad it becomes. For each light-hearted quip expected from a solid Nelson number is an eventual follow-up that cries “well, actually.”
Lines like
“I don’t wanna be the last man standing, or wait maybe I do” and
“Heaven is closed and Hell’s overcrowded, so I think I’ll just stay where I am” fit the tongue-in-cheek context of their respective tracks. Yet at the same time, Nelson’s worn delivery and the semi-solemn tone of the instrumental work reflects a man saying: “But I’m not ready to go.” It’s that very real uncertainty and contradiction that humanizes Nelson and
Last Man Standing on an uncomfortable level. Even if this record may not be the loud ambitious “goodbye”, the triumphant swan song which the artist will be remembered by, it is that ugly preparation for the future to come. And it very well may be what makes this record too depressing for its own good.
