Kris Kristofferson, like most of us, writes better when something's bothering him; unfortunately, he doesn't sing any better. ["To the Bone"], apparently designed to work off some of the feelings attending his split with Rita Coolidge (at least it will be taken that way), has some poignant and well-crafted songs in it, but Kris' vocals are so limited in range and emotional expressiveness that the listener has to do a lot of imaginative reconstruction to appreciate them. Daddy's Song …, a sort of Jody and the Kid revisited, walks a fine line between pathos and bathos, alternating between the guilt and agony a father feels when he can't live with his child and a "rational" viewpoint…. Something similar is true of The Last Time, a song whose economy and near-perfect mating of words and melody recall the glory days of the Bobby McGee era. The shock of hitting the...