Jeff Bridges - 'Jeff Bridges'

Jeff Bridges - Yes, the dude certainly abides but he also sings, something that we learned unequivocally when Bridges took the role of aging country star Bad Blake in the acclaimed 2009 movie Crazy Heart...new project, produced by collaborator and Crazy Heart mainstay T-Bone Burnett (Raising Sand, O Brother), corrals most of the players and writers behind the soundtrack including "The Weary Kind" writer and performer Ryan Bingham and songwriters John Goodwin and the late, great Steven Bruton// Release: Jeff Bridges (August 16, Blue Note) // Sounds like: gritty, impeccably performed Americana-styled country with rough, rootsy, rocky edges exposed --  this isn't slick, pre-fab mainstream Nashville fare...Bingham, Rosanne Cash, Sam Phillips and Benji Hughes add vocal harmonies...

Quote: "There are some songs we maybe only recorded once. Everybody in the same room playing together ... everybody gets inspired by everybody and it becomes another entity [that] no one could have expected. Then, of course, it's all handed over to T Bone and he performs his magic." -- Jeff Bridges // What we like: besides Bridges' appealing, natural way with a song, the real stars here are the songs from Bruton, Goodwin, Burnett and Bridges -- "What A Little Love Can Do" is easily one of the best tunes we've heard this year. a rumbling shuffle with chooglin' guitar riffs and a classic, harmonied chorus...Greg Brown's bluesy "Blue Car" is three chord bliss with pounding piano and slow boogie burn...Bridges nails the clear-eyed resignation at the core of "Maybe I Missed the Point", a tear-in-your-beer slow dance that is one of the album's many highlights...