Making Better Places

After releasing a pair of fine albums for Arista, Willie Nile signed a deal with Geffen Records in 1982, but a dispute with the label put Nile's recording career in limbo, and he ended up not making an album until he struck a deal with Columbia and released Places I Have Never Been in 1991. While in many respects Nile's debut was the purest expression of his music, Places I Have Never Been is where he really nailed the elements of record making; unlike the lean, stark textures of Willie Nile or the overcooked bombast of Golden Down, Places I Have Never Been boasts a sound and an approach that really flatter Nile's songs, and it's certainly his most eclectic and musically adventurous major-label set. T-Bone Wolk and Stewart Lerman produced the album with Nile, and though there's a bit more polish on these tracks than they really need, the team also matched up Nile with some stellar studio players (as well as some Grade-A guest stars, among them Roger McGuinn and Richard Thompson), and they fill out Nile's arrangements with a lot more finesse than on his previous sets.