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Lucinda Williams: West
In West, her latest work, there’s hope, too, if only a sliver. That’s all Lucinda Williams, a woman too painfully aware of the world she occupies, can offer. But it’s enough. It’s also enough to make this Williams’ greatest achievement, better even than the career-defining Car Wheels on a Gravel Road. Throw 2001’s understated but brilliant Essence in the mix and you have three extraordinary discs from an artist who, until the release of Car Wheels, was notoriously perfectionist and devoutly stingy in her output. Williams’ artistic effort since Car Wheels in 1998 is breathtaking: few artists of any type will venture into, and hang around, such explosively creative territory for so long.
Lucinda Williams is a damaged, defiant and fallen Louisiana angel. She flogs her tattered heart again and again and again at a rough and rude wall of her own making. She’s self-flagellant; and lacerating. Her soul is damaged and demented, angry, remorseless, defenseless. Lost love, failed love, the death of kindred spirits and loved ones: these are her artistic stock-in-trade. But anger, too. Without that, she’d recede utterly and pathetically into her own wounded self-absorption. Hearing her music, I want either to swoop in, gather her frailty in my arms and shelter her in some vacant corner of this sweet old world; or else to seek shelter from this woman who may very well track you down, scorn and rebuke you, poor and pathetic lover that you are.
Everything that makes Lucinda Williams great is on full display in West. It’s the pure pulse of her talent: her dainty and lazy phrasing, her brutal honesty, and most of all, her willingness to be exposed. The disc has to do, externally, with the death of the singer’s mother and of a relationship badly ended. What it’s “about” is, simply, life: the stuff of need.
The opening track, “Are You Alright?”(a prayer to her mother) is pure Lucinda: a serpentine drawl that clings like death to every vowel in every word; a simple lyric made profound through repetition; a sweet and subtle country-inflected tune. Track three, “Learning How to Live” best describes the artist today, now: “I’m learning how to live/Without you in my life/I’ll take the best of what you had to give/I’ll make the most of what you left me with/I’m learning how to live.”
“Everything Has Changed” does disaffection and alienation profoundly, because simply: “I can’t feel my love anymore/I can’t feel my love anymore/The mystery and the splendor don’t thrill me like before/And I can’t feel my love anymore.” No more clear-eyed a statement about self-sufficiency is likely to be expressed than in “Rescue:” “He can’t protect you/From the powers that will be/The hours of insanity/He can’t protect you.”
Williams has worked “talkin’ blues” in the past. It’s a form of song that interests her, and she has cited as models of the style Lauryn Hill and Jill Scott. In “Wrap My Head Around That,” she speaks/raps for over nine minutes; it’s accusatory, angry, confrontational, and all over a blues and electronic riff that swells her anger, makes it emphatic and lethal. “I know what you did to me/And I know what we did/And who did what to who and who/The hell were you trying to kid.” Her anger turns to disbelief: “I can’t believe I believed you/When I found out where you’re at/And finding out, wow, you’re too much/And trying to wrap my head around that.”
It’s the shock and self-recrimination of a woman who should know better. But, then, exercising good judgment rarely produces great art. Williams knows this.
Anger abounds in this album. The object of “Come On” is renounced and ridiculed in the only sure way to hurt a man: in his sexual inabilities. “You think you’re in hot demand/But you don’t know where to put your hand/Let me tell you where to stand/You didn’t even make me, come on! No subtlety in the closing verse: “All you do is talk the talk/You can’t back it up with your walk/You can’t light my fire so fuck off/You didn’t even make me, come on!” This is “You’re So Vain” with meat on the bones.
Great credit goes to Produce Hal Wilner for West’s jazz-inflected sound. The album is both firmly traditional, especially in its country-esque sound, (which is Williams’ true strength) and in its modern-ness. Unlike other Williams’ releases, (save for moments on Essence) this one feels right in time (as Williams might say) with 2007-sounding pop and rock structures, and that is by no means a criticism. West also queues up musicians any singer would die for: Bill Frisell, acoustic and electric guitar; the iconic Jim Keltner, drums and percussion. Gary Louris and Gia Ciambotti on background vocals make any song happier or sadder by a wide margin.
The title track ends this extraordinary work with something approaching hope: “Come out west and see/The best that it could be/I know you wouldn’t stay permanently/But come out west and see.” If “bittersweet” (a vile term) can be done any better, I’ll need proof.
West, ultimately, looks forward. It is a striking document of a time and place in a great artist’s life. It is Lucinda Williams’ now, self-captured. The quarry will escape and live to tell, and we are blessed for it.
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