It's been a long time since a Kristofferson album didn't sound like an afterthought to his movie career and Who's to Bless and Who's to Blame is no exception…. His decline as a song-writer is shocking only in its rapidity; all of those "shadows" lurking in and around his early compositions were tip-offs that the decline was inevitable. His most fully realized work, The Silver-Tongued Devil and I, came in 1971 and subsequent albums have only given rise to the question of whether he'll ever be able to pull himself up again. This album leaves the question unanswered.

Kristofferson isn't even rewriting his best songs anymore; he's just falling flat on his face trying to write one song that might say something, anything.

David McGee, in his review of "Who's to Bless and Who's to Blame," in Rolling Stone (by Straight Arrow Publishers, Inc. © 1976; all rights reserved; reprinted by...