Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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63 of 64 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A bluesy mix with a note of hope and redemption., March 2, 2007
It may only be March but I have to say that this is going to be one of my records of the year.
Lucinda Williams has always been a peerless songwriter.She writes about lust, love, and losslike nobody else, and on this album, co-produced with Hal Wilner, she takes on such subjects as her mother's death, the state of the world, and yet another tumultuous relationship which ended badly. It's her usual tough stuff, but this time, Lucinda sneaks in a note of hope and even redemption in the very bluesy mix.
The album's 13 songs together form a largely down-tempo disc, but "West" doesn't only find Williams in a somber mood.
"Mama You Sweet" is upbeat and "Come On" is a nasty, almost raunchy kiss-off, musically akin to "Atonement" from her last album, 2003's "World Without Tears".
She injects doses of hope and light in tracks like "What If", in which she imagines a world where the president wears pink and a prostitute is a queen.
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.
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.
This collection sees her at her best with emotion, raw power and intoxicating, intense tunes which should appeal to much more than country and folk fans.
Four years on from "World Without Tear"s comes this studio album from Lucinda Williams, her eighth in a 37-year career - she doesn't rush.
OK, the predominant theme is pain, and no one does pain as eloquently as Lucinda - or as multifariously.
Yet "West" is all musical mood swings: from stoic, heartbreak country to fierce revenge rock, retro pop to folk, poetry to rap, mellow California to dark LA rock.
What makes Lucinda Williams such an important country artist, besides the excellent songwriting and that sultry, scarred southern voice, is her skill at stretching the genre's boundaries while mining its essence.
Which, often as not, is pain.
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45 of 49 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
So intense., February 21, 2007
"West" is Lucinda's eighth studio album and simply quite brilliant. Nobody does that low-down dirty country blues like Lucinda, locking into a languid, aching groove and sending shivers down the spine of any living thing within range of that earthy vibrato.
Not that she is interested in staying within some country comfort zone, "Wrap My Head Around That" straying into uncharted territory.
It is not the first time she has slowed a lyric to spoken level, but this is a rhythmic bona fide country rap epic, a compelling narrative over nine minutes long, punctuated by snarling guitar chops and solos.
"Words" is another wise old tale written on that cracked parchment of a voice, wafting over an intoxicating melody.
She quotes her father, literature and poetry professor Miller Williams on West's sleeve notes: "You do not know what wars are going on down there where the spirit meets the bone", and these songs are a product of an internal turmoil caused by her mother's death and an intense relationship that spectacularly crashed and burned.
Put brutally selfishly, Lucinda's loss is our gain, gut-wrenching songs like "Unsuffer Me" burn with the agony and ecstasy of "Essence", and "Fancy Funeral" has the rare power to reduce grown men and women to tears.
She has assembled a great band including Bill Frisell, Jim Keltner and her long-time guitarist, the superb Doug Petibone, who do ample justice to this scintillating set of songs.
I like it. You will be moved, to say the least.
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27 of 28 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Everything she does is worth waiting., March 22, 2007
Late-blooming singer-songwriter Lucinda Williams is finding life no easier in middle age; the death of her mother and the end of a stormy relationship have combined to make her eighth album her bleakest so far.
The stately strum of opener "Are You Alright?" is uncharacteristically pretty, before the mood darkens on "Mama You Sweet" and soon she is singing, "The pain courses through every vein, every limb".
"Wrap My Head Around That" is the darkest place, nine minutes of snaking bass and words of betrayal, and although "Come On" provides variety by increasing the volume, the raw guitars sound even more pained than the singer's lonely rasp. It's hard going, but the quality of the songwriting shines through even the deepest gloom.
She's not exactly prolific, "West" is only her 8th studio album in a 37-year career and her first for four years, but everything Lucinda Williams does is worth waiting for.
The 50-something American singer/songwriter is a very special talent. A wonderfully gifted and honest songwriter with an ability to cross genres from the blues to folk and from country to soul and still fuse it into one deeply satisfying and moving whole.
Because although the quantity might be lacking, the quality never is.
Then there's her incredible croaky voice that can snarl or seduce depending on her mood.
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