Lucinda Williams is a wandering spirit in life and in music, having lived in locales precisely as diverse as the multitude of musical traditions that appear in her unclassifiable, totally original songwriting. Despite the fact that her songs have been covered with great success by artists of great renown (Emmylou Harris, Mary Chapin Carpenter, and Steve Earle among them), Williams herself has methodically and tragically eluded wide recognition in her 20 year professional career. Incredibly, her most recent release, Car Wheels on a Gravel Road, is her first album on a major label. Four long years in the making, it has been well worth the wait, as she unleashes her most powerful record to a public too long in their ignorance of her prodigious talents.
Most of the songs on Car Wheels have been in Williams' live repertoire for years, and the album sounds like the product of intense work and reflection given the time to germinate and fully bloom. She continues her forays into country, rock, cajun, folk, and bluegrass styles, with a unique ability to blend all of these together from song to song. Williams' voice: utterly distinct, vulnerable yet powerful, smooth yet rough-hewn, is here given an entirely new treatment in the production. Utterly devoid of effect or affect, her vocals are allowed to seep naturally to the front of the mix and lie there like a still-life painting of the characters she so vividly describes, the primary one being herself.
Apart from the virtual impossibility of categorizing her music (too diverse to be country, too rootsy to be rock, etc.), the factor that has kept Williams from mainstream success is the disarming honesty of her songs. She turns a mirror on herself that is a little bit too well lit for most people's tastes, particularly those of radio programmers, legendary for their unwillingness to take anything that might resemble a chance. Perhaps it is not too much to hope that the other major labels that passed her over, the programmers that ignored her, the lovers that jilted her, and the public that has barely acknowledged her existence will all see the terrible error of their ways and finally give Lucinda Williams her due as one of the finest voices in American music today.
If you like the Lucinda Williams, check out:
Neil Young After The Gold Rush
The Jayhawks Sound Of Lies
Vic Chesnutt The Salesman and Bernadette
Johnny Cash American Recordings
Trailer Bride Smelling Salts
Flying Burrito Bros. Gilded Palace Of Sin
