After salvaging several recording careers, producer Don Was formed his
own imprint, Karambolage, to continue such efforts in the early '90s,
and among other artists worked with Kris Kristofferson, dormant as a solo
singer/songwriter since the commercial failure of his two politically
oriented Mercury albums Repossessed and Third World Warrior in the late
'80s. But A Moment of Forever, the comeback album Was produced for Kristofferson,
was shelved when Karambolage lost its distribution deal, and the album
wasn't released until the summer of 1995 by the independent Justice label.
That means it's a far more ambitious undertaking than you might expect,
packed with Los Angeles studio heavyweights like drummer Jim Keltner,
guitarist Waddy Wachtel, and Heartbreakers organist Benmont Tench, as
well as studio wiz Was on bass and behind the glass. In his late 50s,
Kristofferson has retreated slightly from the agitprop, but fighting is
still a recurring motif in his songs, along with an old favorite subject,
freedom. (Picking up on this, designer Cynthia S. Kinney even sticks the
dictionary definition of freedom into a collage on one of the CD booklet
pages.) But the songwriter often comes off as a sage elder rather than
an active combatant, and the album is as concerned with emotions as it
is with politics. Two old songs, "Casey's Last Ride" and "Good
Love (Shouldn't Feel So Bad)," and two later ones, "Shipwrecked
in the Eighties" and "Under the Gun," join the new compositions,
and the old ones have a lyricism and clarity that makes you wish Kristofferson's
mature writing wasn't so rhetorical. A Moment of Forever doesn't seem
like the place to start in listening to Kristofferson, but those who have
been following his work thus far will find it a good representation of
his philosophical concerns, expressed in strong musical performances.
(by William Ruhlmann, All
Music Guide)
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