★★★★★
Few things in any genre of music, not just country, are as distinctive as a Kris Kristofferson recording; rarely complicated chord structures or melodies adorned with elegant, poetic lyrics, delivered in a deep, speaker-thrumming monotone. In many ways, he's the rhinestone Leonard Cohen. The 38 tracks on this splendid collection are drawn almost exclusively from the albums he put out on Monument between 1970 and 1981, a ferociously fruitful decade-and-a-bit that saw him rise from in-demand...
- recordcollectormag.com
2013-06-20
★★★★★
More death, Vicar? Aged 76, KK faces down the Reaper... When Dos Was penned the sleeve notes for Kris Kristofferson's 1996 album A Moment Of Forever, he didn't shrink from the superlatives. Kristofferson, he suggested, offered the emotional directness of Hank Williams, and the poetic artistry and intellect of Bob Dylan circa Blonde on Blonde. Well, no one could live up to that, and A Moment Of Forever didn't, quite...
- www.uncut.co.uk
2013-04-02
★★★★★
It might be too much to expect a 76-year-old - especially one who's led as wild and weather-beaten a life as Kristofferson - to come up with one of the best songs of his long career, but the title track of this album is an instant classic. Both mocking and full of wisdom, Feeling Mortal is an incredible piece of music, an autumnal rumination on life, love and everything else that punctuates it...
- recordcollectormag.com
2013-04-02
★★★★★
Wide awake and feeling mortal/ At this moment in the dream/ That old man there in the mirror/ And my shaky self-esteem.So opens Feeling Mortal, the 28th record from one of America's greatest songwriters, Kris Kristofferson. In other, less-skilled hands it would ring false, but like so much of his work -- from the bare honesty of "Sunday Morning Coming Down" to the sublime "Why Me Lord?" -- Kristofferson offers up his soul in plain, understated brilliance...
- www.ink19.com
2013-04-02
★★★★★
KK Let's be honest--Kris Kristofferson can play and sing any music that he wants to and people will shower the performance with praise. That's all the more reason to celebrate the brilliance of his first release in three years, Feeling Mortal. What makes this Don Was-produced album so powerful is that Kristofferson does Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash and his other musical idols proud by filling the album with songs that are as gritty and raw as his lead vocals are...
- www.relix.com
2013-02-28
★★★★★
At 76, Kris Kristofferson is one of Americana's true icons. A witness to old-school hillbilly music, rock's excess, punk's rebellion and modern country, the Rhodes Scholar with an emphasis on William Blake's poetry has figured how to transcend all--and he's created timeless Wurlitzer music.
For all the bare-bones arrangements on Feeling Mortal, Kristofferson's first on his own label, it is that ragged voice like a rusty hinge that sets the tone for these songs about the inevitable tapering of...
- www.pastemagazine.com
2013-02-12
★★★★★
From its title to its artwork designed to look tattered around the edges, there's something inherently moving about Kris Kristofferson's new album. He hasn't said it's his swan song, but "Feeling Mortal" is among the most elegiac of his recent releases. "Wide awake and feeling mortal?/?At this moment in the dream?/?That old man there in the mirror?/?And my shaky self-esteem" are the first lines you hear on the opening title track, and that's a heavy sentiment coming from one of country's first...
- www.bostonglobe.com
2013-02-05
★★★★★
Even if its title were different, there still might not be a more death-obsessed 28th album in the history of music than Kris Kristofferson's latest offering, Feeling Mortal. Sure, the singer has always had a knack for the macabre anyway, but there's an acutely subliminal element of increased levity within the texture of these 10 songs that makes this a particularly striking--and strikingly memorable--set...
- www.popmatters.com
2013-01-29
★★★★★
Even if its title were different, there still might not be a more death-obsessed 28th album in the history of music than Kris Kristofferson's latest offering, Feeling Mortal. Sure, the singer has always had a knack for the macabre anyway, but there's an acutely subliminal element of increased levity within the texture of these 10 songs that makes this a particularly striking--and strikingly memorable--set...
- www.popmatters.com
2013-01-29