Has anyone got the new album? Any thoughts?
I've had it for a couple of days now. It reminds me a lot of essence (i think a lot of people are saying that), but I think I like it more. . The key tracks for me so far are Unsuffer Me and West, but that's likely to change as I listen to the album more. I think it's a definite grower, but that's not surprising because I've found that to be the case with all of Lucinda's albums. I'm a bit dissapointed with the production on some of the tracks, it's just
so restrained.
PS I read one review which compared Lucinda to
Courtney - what an absolute joke.
Edit: Here's the review.
Lucinda Williams
West
(Lost Highway) £12.99
West is careworn country siren Lucinda Williams' eighth album, a moving, literate effort that exceeds her blues set from 2003, World Without Tears. It's a seriously good record, particularly if you like your female voices bloodied but unbowed.
In fact, if this parched, wise, snarly set of songs were to be released as
Courtney Love's imminent comeback album, it would be hailed as a revelation, a career-saving comeback. As it is, West risks becoming just one more overlooked gem from this three-times Grammy-winning guitar-toter.
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Born in the same month that Hank Williams (no blood relation) died in 1953, Williams has meandered from folk to country to blues throughout a slow drawl of a career, never quite hitting commercial pay dirt. Her records are restless affairs which overcome the potential cliches of southern-born balladry thanks to her spare and unflinching style.
She's toured with Dylan and writes about being dragged in and out of love with the precision befitting the daughter of a poetry professor. Time magazine once called her 'America's best songwriter'. And although 1998's Car Wheels on Gravel Road saw critical praise chime with action at the tills, West is Williams's finest hour.
There are uncomfortable truths here, carried on easy-going melodies. 'Fancy Funeral' is a wry look at death's priorities that flows as easily as drink. Williams lost her mother and an errant lover as these songs were being written. These two truncated relationships fill West with exquisitely turned suffering; Williams and band provides the expert musical succour. Hal Wilner is the producer who organised this record's quietly unconventional sounds as Williams wanted them.
Clearly, Williams and
Courtney Love are different beasts. The comparison isn't all that fanciful, however, on grungier songs like 'Come on', where Williams's rasp recalls Love's old-smokey gargle and her guitar makes like Neil Young's. 'You didn't even make me ... C'mawn!' she spits scornfully at some hapless fellow's departing back.
Equally raw and sensual is the unravelling blues of 'Unsuffer Me', where Williams's ravaged voice begs: 'Undo my logic/ Undo my fear' with an intensity that verges on the erotic. Subtle and heroically blunt by turns, West is a meditation on abandonment and recovery, abandon and regret that deserves to be hauled out of the Americana ghetto and celebrated everywhere wounded hearts beat.
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