True West

Lucinda Williams's West has topped many early best-of-2007 lists, and it will probably be somewhere at the top of mine. The thing is: I'm not quite sure why. My first exposure to this album was Don Imus's incessant spinning of "Are You Alright?" back in February when it was released (not too long before he got thrown to the dogs by assholes), and I didn't like it. Hold it up against stuff from Lucinda's best albums—Car Wheels on a Gravel Road, Happy Woman Blues, Ramblin', Lucinda Williams, Sweet Old World—and it was, I thought, a step in the wrong direction. Lucinda's Voodoo Lounge. Or something like that. "Are You Alright?" signaled, at least initially, a descent into rock's garbage heap, where old timers tended to get caught up working the machines, recycling old lines and riding away on mopeds run on refurbished lawnmower engines. It had happened to countless artists and few had managed to avoid this hell of lost fire.

Turns out I was wrong. Just as I had been wrong about Essence and World Without Tears, two albums that took time—as the best albums often do—to grow on me, to settle in. The lyrics on West are—for the most part—not Lucinda's strongest, but her voice more than makes up for it. That deep voice that catches in your throat like gravel, that makes it feel like your heart's been closed off in a jar of gasoline. I bought West in the early fall and listened to it on long lonely walks down under the Throggs Neck Bridge. Turns out that's the perfect place to hear West well and truly. Even "Are You Alright?"—which at first sounded so much like some bad poem scribbled in a shitty journal—started to sound good. The longing in Lucinda's voice cut hard. I started to see why Imus loved the song. Lucinda, as always, was leaning towards Hank Williams, calling on him, and "Are You Alright?" revealed itself as a country dirge. In the end, "Are You Alright?," "Mama You Sweet," "Fancy Funeral," "What If," and "West" stand up as some of the finest songs Lucinda's done since Car Wheels (if they hit you the right way).

Stephen M. Duesner, in his review of West on Pitchfork (giving the album a 3.5/10), writes: "With her dreary, deeply disappointing new album, West, which was inspired by the death of her mother and yet another bad break-up, Williams might be getting a little too personal." He goes on to bash the album for its poor lyrics and lack of style (saying that there are nods to folk, blues, country, and rock without incorporating elements from any of those genres). I don't have a problem with Duesner's review; in fact, strangely, I think he's right on the mark about many things. He exposes many of Lucinda's faults, her excesses. But the album keeps telling me different things, showing me more than I expect it to, and, on long walks down by the water on cold days, it makes perfect sense in the way that the old things sometimes make sense. It plays like an album that you loved when you were fourteen and now hide from your friends. It's an album you don't want to betray, don't what to leave behind.

Rating: 7.4/10

Sheltering Hand

Interview w/ David Milch