Kelly Willis is the sort of singer who makes brilliance sound effortless -- studying her work makes it seem that all Willis has to do is show up and sing into the mike, and she comes up with something wonderful. Of course, it's almost certainly not that simple, but part of the charm of Willis' best work is that her singing sounds gracefully natural, flowing easily from her heart and soul. Four years after collaborating with husband Bruce Robison on 2014's Our Year (and 11 years after her last solo effort, 2007's Translated from Love), Willis is just as breezy and delightful as ever on 2018's Back Being Blue, a set of country-accented tunes (six written by Willis) with an emphasis on heartache, expressed either playfully ("I'm a Lover [Not a Fighter]," "Modern World") or with regret ("What the Heart Doesn't Know," "Fool's Paradise"). Willis has as pure and satisfying a voice as anyone in American music, and her instrument is just as strong and pleasing as ever, with the faint Southern twang and subtle vibrato of her singing adding the ideal emotional punctuation to her performances. Robison produced the sessions for Back Being Blue, and the studio work is suitably transparent, capturing the performances with a naturalistic tone and an absence of fuss. Robison also rounded up a handful of musicians just as gifted in their fields as Willis, and the fiddle work from Eleanor Whitmore, Geoff Queen's steel guitar, and Trevor Nealon's keyboards mesh easily with the vocals, each an ideal complement for the other. At less than 32 minutes, Back Being Blue doesn't last long enough to wear out its welcome, but it could run twice as long and still be a treat; it's an easygoing but richly satisfying release from an artist who shares her talents all too rarely.
