Lucinda Williams's father was the poet Miller Williams, a protégé of Flannery O’Connor, and the Louisiana singer-songwriter’s music career has had more in common with the slow-burning literary world. She released her debut album in 1979 and didn’t make a commercial breakthrough until Car Wheels on a Gravel Road in 1998. More recently she’s been a prolific writer at the crossroads where country, blues and rock meet.
Now 67, she’s doing the opposite of mellowing with age. While the guitars on her last album, 2017’s This Sweet Old World, occasionally had a light, Byrds-like jangle, here they roar and blaze, especially on the savage rocker Bone of Contention. Her voice, weather-beaten at the best of times, sounds storm-ravaged here. It’s well-suited to what she calls “that Old Testament stuff”, as on Pray the Devil Back to Hell, which is darkened still further by low fiddle and more unvarnished guitar work from Stuart Mathis.
It’s an intense experience and hard going at times, especially on the churning chant of Wakin’ Up, which is about an abusive relationship. But this angrier sound fits some rare excursions into current events. Everyone will empathise with Bad News Blues: “No matter where I go I can’t get away from it.” Man Without a Soul is surely about a certain loud-mouthed world leader: “You hide behind your wall of lies but it is coming down.”
Newcomers will find there are easier introductions to her work elsewhere, but few that are more powerful.
MORE ABOUT