Over the past few years, Willie Nelson has made a blues album, a kids' album, and umpteen self-congratulatory live, duet and tribute discs with an endless string of guests.

With It Always Will Be, though, he's made another kind of album -- one you might want to hear more than once.

On this refreshing 14-song outing, the Red-Headed Stranger takes the reins of his career again, assembling and delivering a strong slate of original songs and covers.

Willie dishes up some honkytonk frivolity on I Didn't Come Here (and I Ain't Leavin'), gently unwraps the simply pretty balladry of the title cut, claims Tom Waits' Picture in a Frame as his own, gets jazzy on a couple of cuts (including a duet with Norah Jones), shares a slice of bittersweet heartache with Lucinda Williams and even makes a Toby Keith song sound good.

And by the end of it, he's made his strongest, least forced album since 1998's Teatro. Not that that's not saying much, of course.

Track Listing
1. It Always Will Be
2. Picture in a Frame
3. Way You See Me
4. Be That as It May - Paula Nelson
5. You Were It
6. Big Booty
7. I Didn't Come Here (And I Ain't Leavin')
8. My Broken Heart Belongs to You
9. Dreams Come True - Norah Jones
10. Overtime
11. Tired
12. Love's the One and Only Thing
13. Texas
14. Midnight Rider - Toby Keith