A House Safe For Tigers

This obscure soundtrack to an oddball doc made by American music legend Lee Hazlewood and Swedish filmmaker Torbjörn Axelman turned out to be one of Hazlewood’s finest efforts. (The 1975 LP only saw limited Swedish release until this 2012 worldwide reissue.) At its core, the album’s a layered celebration of life; its title is lifted from a Buddhist prayer. It's loosely inspired by Hazlewood’s years in Sweden and time spent with Axelman on the bucolic island of Gotland. The lovely opener (“Souls Island”) is epic Hazlewood: his dusty twang and cracked-muffler croon glide atop a stunning orchestral swoon, which was arranged by album producer Mats Olsson. The tune’s so good it gets repeated; the second version features a bafflingly apt Swedish narrative by Axelman. Elsewhere, there’s boyhood gaze-back (“Our Little Boy Blue”), a Native American anecdote of heartbreak (“The Nights”), an elegantly ascending instrumental (“Absent Friends—A House Safe for Tigers”), and a rocking country-folk yarn (“Lars Gunnar and Me”) that gets down “to drinking wood alcohol we found in some old barn.”