[If Honky Tonk Heroes] was a bar album, then This Time is an after-hours mellow-out partner.

As usual, the subject matter is basic: bar/drinking songs, songs about the West and outlaws and women….

"This Time" is a Waylon composition (wish he'd write more) and it defines his macho image pretty aptly…. But Waylon can also get inside tenderness and sorrow….

An album that grows on you, and a fine companion to Heroes—if not quite the one we've all been waiting for.

Tony Glover, "Records: 'This Time'," in Rolling Stone (by Straight Arrow Publishers, Inc. © 1974; all rights reserved; reprinted by permission), Issue 165, July 18, 1974, p. 64.