Don’t approach this material if you’re in the mood for a line dance – this music comes with a 40% proof label and its own pack of king-sized Rizla… Check out Ginger’s past Secret History Of Rock’n'Roll entries.

LUCINDA WILLIAMS
Car Wheels On A Gravel Road
1998, Mercury/Polygram

Hailed as ‘America’s best songwriter’ by Time magazine, it doesn’t take much figuring out why Lucinda Williams is as much the artists’ favourite as she is almost internationally invisible. While far less talents enjoy far greater fruits, Lucinda has a powerful worldwide cult following every bit as strong as that of, say, Frank Zappa, albeit on a far more discerning scale.

Never one for rush-releasing material, Williams would record a paltry four albums in her 20 year career leading up to Car Wheels On A Gravel Road. Beginning with a debut of sweet voiced standards, ‘Ramblin’, and culminating with the melancholic ode to suicide ‘Sweet Old World’, this world worn lady of blues-country would define a tough style of vocal delivery every bit matched by a direct lyrical approach, and by this, her fifth album she’d gotten just about tough enough to soften, allowing brief excerpts of childlike love to enter the bitter tales of rejection. The result is an instantly classic collection of adult country songs for a disillusioned generation.

Famously firing Steve Earle as producer, Williams would eventually finish this, her greatest album by far, after three years of painstaking perfectionism, and while in most circles this much of a gap since previous album, Sweet Old World, released a whole 6 years earlier, could be considered clinical and downright dull the finished offering is a career defining album that is every bit worth the hiatus.

‘Right In Time’, the album’s opener, says everything that is great about Lucinda Williams. Croaky voice oozing a free spirited sexual energy, astounding musicianship, classic songwriting and a sense that the object of her desires is no-one that a good girl’s mother would immediately approve of. Instantly the production boasts of a clarity and timeless quality that Williams’ previous, or, for that matter, subsequent releases would enjoy. Drums whipcrack tight and vocals stridently invasive, this is a very confident sounding album indeed, and, with the songs and performances to match, a hugely enjoyable listen. And as Ms Williams describes a very personal account of undressing before a bout of self service, while all the while thinking of her muse on his bike, the listener honestly hankers to share a bottle of whiskey with this woman as much as a bed, it has to be said.

‘Car Wheels On A Gravel Road’ settles into a solid, laid back groove as the album’s second song establishes a lonesome theme of bittersweet memories that Lucinda will revisit throughout this, largely upbeat album.

‘2 Kool 2 Be 4-Gotten’ belies its Prince-esque title by delivering a 100% proof alt-country dusty roadster, the kind of which could easily feature in a David Lynch movie and which Sheryl Crow is still trying to write. ‘Drunken Angel’ enters dressed up as The Faces as performed by a biker’s moll fronting The Black Crowes. And as ‘Concrete And Barbed Wire’ suggests Hank Williams with a modern twist and a tongue loosened by age and experience as much as booze, we’re five songs in and this album has settled into its own boots, smoldering sensuously and stewing in rich storytelling.

Don’t approach this material if you’re in the mood for a line dance – this music comes with a 40% proof label and its own pack of king-sized Rizla.

‘Lake Charles’ sees Lucinda hit her full Marlborough red roasted vocal glory while the songwriting adopts a traditional edge that almost takes the quality of this material to higher, more familiar level. Truly the sign of all great songwriting. And after this awesome slice of laid backwoods melancholy the mood is shifted into bluegrass/skiffle that truly reveals Williams’ rootsy authenticity as ‘Can’t Let Go’ channels the porch-beating originals of traditional blues, further blurring the distinction between authentic country and authentic blues.

‘I Lost It’ mixes a jaunty melody with a languid rhythm resulting in surely one of the finest examples of pop-based middle of the road that ever drew whiskey soaked breath, perfectly setting the scene for the album’s finest point, the wonderful ‘Metal Firecracker’ [hear a cover version by Bright Eyes here]. Please don’t let the title throw you off, this song is the track with which to truly fall in love with Lucinda Williams.

“All I ask is don’t tell anybody the secrets, don’t tell anybody the secrets I told you,” pleads a chorus so perfect that you will revisit this one for the rest of your life, and without the aid of speakers, too, as this song will enjoy heavy rotation on the jukebox in your head forever. Heavenly catchy and devastatingly simple, this is songwriting at its finest and most direct.

Following this track would be an unenviable task for most, so it is almost a relief, and testament to this wonderful album, that Lucinda does it with such grace and poise, with ‘Greenville’, a song so moving that it’s difficult to know why. Maybe it’s the purity of the vocal performance? Maybe it’s Emmylou Harris’ glorious harmony vocals? Maybe it’s the memory of a love-that-never-was that this song recalls? I still don’t know why this song gets me every single time, and like an armoured glove inside my chest it’s doing just that right now!

Emotionally draining and yet a delight so sweet that you’d gladly revisit that place in your heart that reminds you that life is not perfect but thank God people like Lucinda Williams not only share this notion but have penned some of the greatest songs in history on the subject. And that, in itself, makes life perfect.

And with this powerhouse one-two fresh in your ears and heart ‘I Still Long For Your Kiss’, with it’s playful 50s swing, almost comes as blessed relief after the previous tsunami of emotion manipulation. By this point in the album, may I add, you would happily run to the bookies and put odds on Lucinda being the greatest singer in American roots music. Such is the subtle erosion of all reservation you might have entered into this album with regarding Williams’ beaten and bruised vocal technique. She sounds so unlike any other singer that this very difference is the quality that so effectively glues this fine vocalist to your subconscious. Deeper than simple technical ability, Lucinda Williams has lived every one of these songs.

‘Joy’ holds down a Tom Petty groove and adds an almost schoolyard rap to it, leaving the joyless subject matter free range to roam and infiltrate. This leaves final track, ‘Jackson’, to swing sleepily on a bed of bluegrass picking and deep-rooted sadness as Lucinda sings of leaving the subject of her longing and, instead, taking that long and lonely road in the opposite direction, following it until the hurting stops. Ry Cooder style slide slinks in and out of the song and a single sombre cello underpins the mood, suggesting a far darker version of ‘Will The Circle Be Unbroken?’

The perfect ending to an album of such emotional depth that any ending seems trite. This album should be kept on loop, to be revisited any time the world once again becomes an unfriendly and troublesome place.

Lucinda can take great comfort that she has created a soundtrack that allows the rest of us to explore the more unwelcome, yet no less vital of emotions. In fact she places such virtue on the dark side of the human experience, namely loving others, that she makes a broken down love affair seem like a valiant attempt rather than a failed endeavour.

Hers is a rare talent, and one that will be revisited and relived for as long as our species is born with emotions.

Little surprise, then, that Lucinda Williams is the artists’ favourite. Few people with an interest in art, love or the human condition could argue.