The face on the cover is a bit blurry but easily recognizable, and the name on the album is Willie Nelson [ tickets ]. But "Songbird" belongs just as much to Ryan Adams [ tickets ], who produced it, wrote a song for it, and backed Nelson with his own band, The Cardinals.

Putting aside the question of where Adams found the time to do this project, after making three of his own records within a year: What happens when the original alt-country guy meets the next generation?

The answer is a slightly different Willie Nelson record. The voice is familiar; the arrangements are not. The Cardinals have absorbed a lot of rock in their brand of country, and Adams himself seems to flit between the two genres from record to record. The loud electric-guitar blasts and occasional feedback squalls here seem miles from Willie's brand of Texas soul. Thus "Songbird" is less a bluesy Texas shuffle than an Americana jangle, even with the presence of Nelson's longtime harmonica player, Mickey Raphael.

But while Adams might have pushed Willie in more of a rock direction than he would normally go, the songs are well chosen. The new compositions--Adams' "Blue Hotel" and Nelson's "Back to Earth"--aren't their best, but they grow with repeated listenings. Willie revisits his "Rainy Day Blues," "We Don't Run" and "Sad Songs and Waltzes" to good effect. As for covers, The Grateful Dead's aforementioned "Stella Blue," Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah" and Gram Parsons' "$1000 Wedding" are all in Nelson's wheelhouse, and he puts his distinctive stamp on each, right down to his unmistakable classical-guitar strums.

The biggest surprise is the rendition of Fleetwood Mac's title song. Nelson's weathered but warm pipes give Christine McVie's bittersweet lyrics a new dimension, and The Cardinals provide sparkling support. Also unexpected is Adams' almost mournful arrangement of "Amazing Grace," the kind of standard that Nelson can make his own.

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