The Patience Fader

The album's 12 intimate essays, described as "elegies as much as songs," feel like ghostly, poignant testaments to our times. [Mar 2022, p.86]

This is actually one of his more readily enjoyable albums, even if it's a little less adventurous most of the records from his long-running Pan•American project.

The album primarily features solo guitar, harmonica and lap steel, all cloaked in gauzy atmospheres, and often conjuring mental images of a sprawling, rural America. The most compelling moments on the album make a hazy blend of guitar twang and swirling electronics, as on “Outskirts, Dreamlit” whose nostalgic melody tumbles almost without a sense of time. [May 2022, p.52]

Occasionally, Nelson drops his icy façade for a moment of home-spun warmth and “sincerity”, whatever that means; for this, look no further than the wondrous acoustics of “Nightwater”, which lacks some of the sonic depth of other compositions herein but, as a work of solos, has surprising bite.