This came out in 2002 – or at least that’s when I got it. Here’s what I said about it back then (with some minor editing):
Austin country-pop singer-songwriter Kelly Willis hasn’t had an especially easy time over the years.
She’s written great songs that never made the charts, she’s made great albums that never sold, and she’s been marketed every which way but never become a star. Plenty of artists in her shoes would give up, move back home and get a job. But Willis, bless her heart, just keeps on doing what she does best — writing simple, understated roots-pop love songs and singing them in her warm, honeyed twang. With her latest full-length, the ironically titled Easy, she does it as well as she ever has, giving her faithful cult of fans another 10 homespun missives — originals like the breezily shuffling If I Left You and the candlelit Reason to Believe, and covers like the zippy bluegrass of You Can’t Take it With You (by Paul Kelly) and the bittersweet country waltz of Don’t Come the Cowboy With Me Sonny Jim! (by the late Kirsty MacColl). As always, it’s easy to fall in love with Willis — and hard to understand why everyone else still hasn’t caught on.
