Okay, he admits in the liner notes that these sessions were done between movies and, yep, they are mostly Mr Kris re-addressing his back-catalogue (Me and Bobby McGee, For the Good Times and so on).
And all right, there are a few guests (JacksonBrowne, Steve Earle, Vince Gill and others) to pad out proceedings and lend further credibility.
But the grizzled old troubadour here also takes the songs back to their origins as lyrically crafted, melodically spare statements. And that allows them to breathe anew as refined emotional considerations on love and loss and loneliness.
There's something ineffable about Kristofferson's dragging, downer delivery of lines like "I crossed the empty street and caught the Sunday smell of someone fryin' chicken, and it took me back to somethin' I'd lost along the way."
Kristofferson might never be the best interpreter of his own material (his style is monochromatic and all mid-range creak) but he can get behind a lyric like few others and here retrieves some of his finest songs from the bin of kitsch. You could easily argue his weary version of For the Good Times here (with Matraca Berg on backing vocals) and revisit to Help Me Make It Through the Night are among his finest deliveries in a very long career.
Sunday-morning music for adults when the head is bleary and full of regret for things thoughtlessly said? Probably.
And someone is bound to haul out the old cliche that, like a good whisky, Kristofferson just improves with age.
But put aside that skepticism and you might be inclined to agree.
