Lucinda Williams, the woman with perhaps the most distinctive voice in country-rock - or any genre of music for that matter - has just dropped her 14th album. It's an album of its time and for this time.
Written and recorded before the Coronavirus epidemic took hold and shaped our lives and futures, you wonder if Lucinda Williams had a crystal ball. Among those deserving of her wrath is an unnamed man of hate, greed, envy, and doubt, a man without dignity, shame or grace, depression, dementia, the evils of social media, and domestic violence.
As an incisive and thoughtful commentator on the human condition, either personal or macro, Williams has few peers. She has written about some of these issues before but never with a venom or a sustained verve like this. The music harks back to her blues days of old and is both apt and engrossing. Akin to Bob Dylan’s ‘Time Out Of Mind’ or Bruce Springsteen’s ‘Darkness On The Edge Of Town’ in certain themes and mood, this is an artist embracing dark material in a totally incise, raw, and engrossing manner.
‘Bad News Blues’ lists all the places you can get the latest woes and grief in the planet, in a world where only one to prosper are:
Liars and lunatics, fools and thieves, clowns and hypocrites…
‘Big Black Train’ talks of the pain and anguish caused by depression. Sung to a slow blues riff, insistent like the disease itself, it ends on a note of resistance and strength:
I don’t want to get on board that big black train.
‘Man Without A Soul’ is perhaps one of the most coruscating put-downs of an individual you’ll ever hear.
You bring nothing good to this world beyond a web of cheating and stealing. You hide behind your wall of lies but it is coming down, yeah, it is coming down.
Again, there’s the sharp social commentary and the eviscerating put-down but with real hope for the future. A change is gonna come! Relating back to the old Robert Johnson blues analogy, Trump won’t even be able to cut a deal with the devil as he has nothing left to barter with being a ‘Man Without A Soul’.
Williams maintains this is not an angry album. It’s a defiant one. It’s both. Halfway through reviewing the album, I learned my mother had been diagnosed with Covid-19. The same day the leader of the free world suggested a remedy to this awful killing virus might be to inject bleach into the human body. I found an album to match my mood in a dark place and I’m grateful to Lucinda Williams for helping get me thought a terrible night. Anger can sometimes be a cathartic emotion if it leads to a determination to change things, to right wrongs.
There is anger in this album but there is that overriding sense of defiance and a signpost to resolution too. Passionate, brave, loud, and brilliant; this is an important album. Listen to it, stay safe, and stay angry:
Keep me with all of those who help me find strength when I’m feeling weak. Keep me with all of those who help me stay strong and guide me along. Keep me in the hands of saints. Keep me with the good souls, with the better angels.