COWBOY IN SWEDEN

Personnel includes: Lee Hazelwood, Nina Lizell, Suzi Jane Hokom. Includes liner notes by Lee Hazelwood, Nina Lizell and Torbjorn Axelman. Hazelwood is a strange guy. A producer in the '50s and a singer-songwriter in the '60s and '70s, he has fashioned an utterly unique composite by combining cowboy themes, rockabilly, ballads, and richly orchestrated pop with his clever, honest, and sometimes oblique lyrics. In 1970, Hazelwood traveled to Sweden to collaborate with director Tobjorn Axelman. For one of these ventures, Hazelwood wrote and performed the music for the titular television program. His songs, which feature the sweetly naive vocals of Nina Lizell, are presented on this re-issue. Despite the inclusion of loping cowboy ballads and thick orchestral arrangements, this is psychedelic music of the unlikeliest sort. The songs are often strikingly good, topped with Hazelwood's peculiar, unseasoned baritone. But it's difficult to ignore the feeling that everything--from the countrified spur-jangling lope of "No Train To Stockholm" to the spooky cabaret of "Vem Kan Segla"-has been drenched in irony. The album shifts moods radically. On one hand we find the dark, atmospheric swirl and half-ironic blues narrative of "The Night Before;" on the other is "Hey Cowboy," a garishly bright Broadway-esque duet between Hazelwood and Lizell. It is this very sense of never knowing just how seriously Hazelwood can/should be taken that makes him such an appealing and compelling artist.