Lucinda Williams discovered (belatedly)

The thinking person's country/rock star

DAN COREN

At long last! In February, the country-rock singer Lucinda Williams released her newest album, West. I had eagerly awaited the great event for months. But a year ago, I had never heard of Lucinda Williams.

At that point, Williams had already won three Grammys. She had appeared at the Mann Center and Penn’s Landing within the past few years. Emmylou Harris is reported to have said, “Lucinda Williams could sing the chrome off a trailer hitch.” Despite all this, I’d never heard of her.

In fact, until very recently my contact with popular music in general, and country music in particular, had been, at best, sporadic. To be sure, Elvis dominated my life in the 1950s, as did the Beatles and Dylan in the late 1960s. But beyond those giants, I’ve been hunkered down in my classical music foxhole most of the time. Once in while, I’d peek up over the edge, get hit by something like heavy metal, and duck back down again.

On occasion, though, I’d encounter something from the world of country music— Faith Hill singing the national anthem, or her husband Tim McGraw singing a wonderful lyric about his relationship with his late father Tug (“All of a sudden, goin’ fishin’/ wasn’t such an imposition”)— and each time I’d sense the impression of accomplished musicians singing well-crafted music.

Then, about a year ago, a 30-something friend of mine, Sean, in blatant defiance of the copyright laws, gave me several discs by artists he thought I should know about. Among them was the rock group Wilco (ugh!); the work of the gloriously odd musical genius, John Darnielle and his group, the Mountain Goats; and Lucinda Williams. Thank you, Sean. Thank you a thousand times.

Three great erotic musical moments

This link will take you to the first Lucinda Williams song I ever heard: “Right in Time” from her break-though album, Car Wheels on a Gravel Road. One of these days I’ll sit down with my sound clip editor and assemble a musical collage of three of the great erotic moments in musical literature: the climax of Wagner’s “Liebstod” from Tristan; the words “Und Ach, sein Kuss” from Schubert’s Gretchen am Spinnrade; and Williams’s “Ohhhhh, my baby!” from this cut. Lucinda will fit right in.

Within a few weeks, I had hunted down every Williams song I could find. Her music has been my constant companion ever since, liberally blended with my customary regimen of Mozart and his cohorts. (In search of similar music, I now also make frequent, sometimes very fruitful, visits to WXPN and, in the late afternoon, to Princeton’s WPRB.)

Something in common with Verdi

Why do I love Lucinda Williams’ music so much? The most honest answer, I suppose, is that I simply can’t enough of that wonderful Louisiana-infused voice. But the attraction goes deeper than that.

As a singer in the Penn Choral Society, I've been practicing Verdi’s Requiem this semester; but even before that, I’d often found myself pairing Williams and Verdi in my mind. It’s not because of any real musical connection (memorable lyrical melodies are not Williams’s forte, and her voice certainly isn’t beautiful in the conventional sense), but because I sense that Williams’s best work, like Verdi’s, comes right from the gut, from the very core of her being.

And then there are the uncompromising choices Williams makes for her subject matter, much of which rivals the grimness of the last act of Rigoletto. Much of her fame rests on the way she has spun her own operatic personal suffering into artistic gold. As you’d expect, Williams has written many songs about lost love, but also about dark topics like the suicide of close friends and the effects of childhood abuse.

Classical and poetic roots

Finding this on-line article made everything fall in place for me. Of course! Her father is a poet, and a famous one at that. And an academic. Her mother was trained as a classical pianist. Her biggest influence, Williams says, was Dylan. Lucinda Williams is, along with all that dark, uncompromising passion, the thinking man’s country/rock singer. Like Dylan, she has consistently surrounded herself with terrific sidemen. And, as West makes more evident than ever, she is (also like Dylan) as much a poet as she is a musician.

That said, I agree with the general Internet consensus that West is something of a disappointment. It includes several stridently angry songs about a broken relationship that, with their unimaginative lyrics and music that seems to strain for special effects, rank among her worst work. Perhaps Williams, having (we are told) found true love at last, will have to abandon the lovelorn misery vein she has mined so successfully throughout her career.

Also, if you were a fan expecting more of the voluptuous, luxuriant darkness of Williams’s previous album, World Without Tears, you won’t find it here. What you will find, though, are two hypnotic pared-down songs, “Mama You Sweet” and “Words,” that are melodically minimalist– the first takes place almost entirely within the range of a major third– and cross the border from popular song into a realm that’s not quite rap, not quite song, but unequivocally poetry. These are pieces that make me wonder what path this wonderful independent-minded artist will take next.

Here, for what it’s worth, are my personal recommendations for a basic Lucinda Williams library.

Best albums overall:

Sweet Old World (1992) and the ironically titled World Without Tears (2003). (Here’s a link to an extremely high-quality youtube recording of the title track of World Without Tears. This clip, in my opinion, shows Williams and her band at their very best.)

Best songs:

“Fruits of My Labor,” from World Without Tears. This is my favorite Lucinda Williams song, with wonderful lyrics like, "Got in my Mercury and drove out West/Pedal to the metal and my love to the test” and “I cry for you, boy, but truth is my savior.”

“Words Fell,” the great country/rock adagio that closes the same album.

“Pineola,” “Which Will” and “Hot Blood” from Sweet Old World. (“Hot Blood,” which might have been named “Stalker’s Blues,” is the only Williams song that might be called humorous.)

“2 Kool 2 Be 4-Gotten” from Car Wheels. One of her most creative lyrics, apparently based on signs on the wall in a honky-tonk bar.

And many, many more. Enjoy.



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