Part of the reason
Jeff Bridges was so convincing in his Oscar-winning role as Bad Blake in 2009’s Crazy Heart is that he’s so comfortable in his own skin he lends a casual authority to whatever he does. He stood behind the microphone as if he belonged, a stance no doubt derived from his own musical background: about a decade earlier he released his own album, the thoroughly likeable Be Here Soon, a record that lightly traded his hippie Lebowski persona. His music bona fides came in handy for Crazy Heart and that film in turn set the stage for
Bridges' second album, an eponymous 2011 set produced by
T-Bone Burnett, the producer and music supervisor for Crazy Heart.
Burnett picks up where the movie left off, cleans up
Bridges’ Bad Blake act, giving him some finely tailored threads and a tastefully retro production, encouraging him to shuffle along. Amiable dude that he is,
Bridges settles into this groove, sliding deep within the smeary analog mystique that’s been
Burnett’s specialty since
Robert Plant and
Alison Krauss'
Raising Sand. As a singer and songwriter,
Bridges speaks conversationally, never underlining his points, never treating the intimate as epic. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine