"Blessed" is Lucinda Williams' 11th album.
Lucinda Williams excels in the songs she was supposed to be avoiding.Photo by Michael Wilson
When you’re an artist lucky and talented enough to have released one or more landmark albums in your career, your new releases will be inevitably and unfairly compared to those benchmarks. For example, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards often joke about how every album they’ve released in the past three decades always gets labeled the “best album since Tattoo You.”
Of course, that can’t be true every time, and such a knee-jerk reaction mitigates all of the work done subsequently to the so-called masterpieces.
Such is the case for Lucinda Williams. Her newest, Blessed, is actually the 11th album she’s released in a recording career that began way back in the late 1970s. Yet her career is defined by Car Wheels On A Gravel Road, a 1998 album that was practically flawless and helped to legitimize the genre known as alt-country.
That’s a lot to live up to, and Williams, to her credit, hasn’t really worried about it all that much. Each release since Car Wheels has been solid, and each has staked new musical ground while still staying true to a format that never goes out of style for her: Twanging guitars, insightful lyrics and her inimitable, alluring drawl.
Blessed is more of the same, with some slight variations. Williams has spoken in interviews about how she can write love-gone-wrong songs in her sleep, so she’s trying to branch out a bit here. She dabbles in topics like war (“Soldier’s Song”), suicide (“Seeing Black”), and the death of a friend (“Copenhagen.”) Believe it or not, she even finds some bliss in a relationship on the accordion-kissed “Sweet Love.”
While the results of these forays are generally solid, they lack some of the fiery attitude for which the songwriter is known. Because of the topic matter, these songs are often accompanied by slow tempos and sleepy arrangements that are a bit predictable. It’s all tastefully done and well played by Williams’ backing musicians, but there isn’t a lot of bite.
Williams also falls into a rut with her songwriting style throughout the album. Many of the songs latch onto one lyrical motif from which all the other lines are extrapolated. For example, in “Born To be Loved,” Williams sets up the refrain with line after line starting “You weren’t born to be …”; on the title track, she runs through a litany of all of the things by which “We’re blessed.” This can be an effective technique used sparingly, but, when used over several songs, it becomes a tad repetitive.
Ironically, the things that work the best on the album are the songs which deal with the topic Williams was supposed to be avoiding. Album-opening “Buttercup” is a snarling putdown of a wastrel ex filled with the feistiness lacking elsewhere. Lucinda also rehashes “Kiss Like Your Kiss,” the gorgeous ballad she originally recorded as a duet with Elvis Costello for the True Blood soundtrack; on this version, she goes it alone (although Costello shows up on the album playing guitar on several songs).
There are several other standouts, including the lovely “I Don’t Know How You’re Livin,’” a soulful plea to someone who has fallen on hard times, and “Convince Me,” which rides an echoing guitar riff and features Williams sounding somehow both tough and vulnerable all at once.
The hits outweigh the misses here, but, then again, with Williams, they usually do. Her turn toward contemplative and meditative material seems at times a bit out of character, but it also makes for a pretty soothing listen from top to bottom.
The large shadows cast by Car Wheels will always be a part of the Williams story, but, truth be told, Blessed shines just fine on its own.
SAMPLE BLESSED
"Buttercup"
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"Convince Me"
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"Kiss Like Your Kiss"
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