Almost four years have passed since Lucinda Williams has released an album. In that span, she has lost her mother, went through a few turbulent relationships and has gotten engaged. <\/p>\n
Partially inspired by Bob Dylan\u2019s simple, mortality-facing Time Out Of Mind<\/i>, Williams described West<\/i> a \u201clast batch\u201d of songs she wanted to release. \u201cBatch\u201d is usually a bad word when describing an album, alluding to something that isn\u2019t uniformed whole. But West<\/i> is similar to her other unified albums in the themes of loss, tattered relationships, renewal and connections to land and family. <\/p>\n
Lyric-wise, West<\/i> is as solid as any other Lucinda Williams album. Her fixation with American geography is all over \u201cWhere is My Love.\u201d \u201cIs my love in Gainesville \/ grinning, radiant and warm \/ drinking whiskey \u2018til he\u2019s had his fill \/ inspired by a summer storm.\u201d Title-wise, it\u2019s hard not to think of Cat Power\u2019s song of the same title, which was released last year. But whereas Chan Marshall\u2019s musical risks on The Greatest<\/i> resulted in some of her greatest recordings, Williams\u2019 musical risks on West<\/i> seems to have resulted in her most constrained album. <\/p>\n
The songs that have generated the most press on West are \u201cCome On\u201d and the nine-minute atmospheric \u201cWrap My Head Around That.\u201d \u201cCome On\u201d has been described by some critics as \u201chilarious\u201d and as \u201cjuvenile\u201d by others. When Williams growls \u201cDude, you\u2019re so fired \/ shut up, I\u2019m not inspired \/ all I\u2019m feeling now is tired \/ you didn\u2019t even make me, come on!\u201d \u2013 you\u2019re supposed to feel her anger, but all I could think about as the way she belted out those same \u201ccome on\u201d\u2019s in World Without Tears<\/i>\u2019 \u201cAtonement.\u201d\u00a0 The droning electric guitar makes the song plod to its finish. The ending line \u201cYou can\u2019t light my fire so fuck off\u201d may have been used to elicit a feeling of unease with the listener, but the uneasy reaction comes from witnessing one of Williams\u2019 weakest moments on an album, not for its vulgarity. It\u2019s almost like watching a favorite performer have a very off night on stage. <\/p>\n
Still, Williams has hardly entered a weak recording cycle, such the one that befell Bob Dylan in the early \u201870s and early \u201880s. \u201cFancy Funeral,\u201d a song written about her mother Lucille, rivals the power of \u201cPineola\u201d off of Sweet Old World<\/i>. Debating about the cost for a funeral is as common of an experience as anyone is going to experience and Williams\u2019 brings this experience as close to the listener as possible when she sings \u201cIt\u2019s three or four months’ salary \/ Just to pay for all those things.\u201d <\/p>\n
Hal Willner, a producer who has produced an incredible array of tribute albums and has produced great, unified pieces out of the most unlikely of collaborations, such as the William S. Burroughs \/ Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy\u2019s team up Spare Ass Annie and Other Takes<\/i>, initially distilled West<\/i>\u2019s sound to just Williams\u2019 voice and guitar. The lack of the steel guitar, a sound that has become synonymous with a Lucinda Williams recording, may cause a few fans to recoil, but Willner does something else that most fans probably thought was impossible: make Williams\u2019 voice sound lost in some of the cluttered arrangements. <\/p>\n
West<\/i>\u2019s heavy focus on ballads isn\u2019t unique for Williams. With Essence<\/i>, she released an album almost entirely of downtempo ballads. However, she did include a rebel-rouser of a track with \u201cGet Right With God.\u201d Such a moment is desperately needed with West<\/i>. It\u2019s an album that few singer\/songwriters could even attempt to make. But expectations, partly from fans and critics, partly from the artist herself, are much higher for Lucinda Williams. The absence of some of Williams\u2019 more traditional songwriting and instrument choices should have resulted in an album that divided fans. <\/p>\n
However, because of the sameness of most of the songs on West<\/i>, the album can\u2019t even exist as a polarizing album. Instead, the listener gets an album of 13 new Lucinda Williams songs. A definite reason to celebrate, but for the first time, the emotional impact of an entire album listening experience from Williams is lacking. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":28692,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[6161],"rating":[5612],"class_list":["post-40182","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-lucinda-williams","rating-rating-b-minus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/40182","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40182"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/40182\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28692"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40182"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40182"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=40182"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=40182"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}