Lucinda Williams C/D?

See also: her cover of Nick Drake's "Which Will" on the first Morning Becomes Eclectic compilation.

From the (petty) Bill Buford profile in the New Yorker and the erratic behavior on her tour a year or two ago, it seems like she may be no stabler than Cat Power, and I think there's a similarity in their brilliance and inconsistency.

this is possibly true, but only if meant as a compliment.

pompous.

January 28, 2007
Playlist | Lucinda Williams
A) Sexy, B) Loud or C) Dreamy? Try D) All of the Above.
By WINTER MILLER
IMAGINE a time before alternative country. Before Americana and roots rock. Picture a corner office, sometime in the early ’80s, with record executives scratching their heads over how to market a talented singer, songwriter and guitarist from Louisiana named Lucinda Williams. Was she country? Folk? Blues? The answer of course was (and is) all of the above. A three-time Grammy winner, Ms. Williams will release “West,” her eighth studio album, on Feb. 13. A tour is scheduled to begin soon after, including a stop at Radio City Music Hall on March 23. Ms. Williams, 54, shows no signs of getting any less sexy with her lyrics or her taste in music. She recently spoke by phone with Winter Miller about what she’s listening to now.

Sara Tavares

She’s Portuguese. She writes and sings beautifully melodic songs that have a dreamy, uplifting energy to them. I adore this kind of music and listen to a lot of it, whatever I can find. There’s something very soothing and hypnotic about it. It’s very sexy and wraps me up in coziness. It kind of transports me. Sara Tavares has a very fresh perspective. A fresh outlook: life is fun, life is glorious, live in the moment. That’s what her “Balancê” (Times Square) feels like.

Heartless Bastards

They’re cool, loud and raunchy. They’re a great live three-piece band: guitar, bass and drums. They’re from Ohio. Erika Wennerstrom, the guitar player, is unassuming and a little shy, but she has a mighty blues-rock voice. She just stomps and wails onstage. “All This Time” (Fat Possum) sounds new and edgy. They’re blending sounds from punk and blues, similar to what the Black Keys are doing, but more punk.

Carrie Rodriguez

Carrie is a young singer-songwriter with roots in Texas. She is the daughter of an Austin singer-songwriter, David Rodriguez. She started out accompanying other artists on violin and then spent some time as part of a duet with Chip Taylor, who is famous for writing “Wild Thing” and “Angel of the Morning.” Now she is finally striking out on her own as well, and I have to say I am very impressed. She’s got something unique in her voice that’s very subtle and a little smoky and sweet. She’s got a refreshingly spunky attitude to go along with it. I detect a certain wisdom in her, and yet a sense of wonder as well. On “Seven Angels on a Bicycle” (Back Porch/Train Wreck/EMI), Chip Taylor contributes to the songwriting.

Richard Dorfmeister vs. Madrid de Los Austrias

I absolutely adore his stuff and listen to it all the time. You have to hear it. It’s remixed funk. It grooves big time. The music is filled with sexy beats, dance beats and very primitive beats. There is a connection between the hip-hop remix funk music of today and the Delta blues. When you listen to a record like “Grand Slam” (G-Stone), you hear how the music is based on African rhythms. It goes all the way back to that. With Dorfmeister, it sounds like he’s taking soul-funk music and blending hip-hop beats and reggae with African and Latin rhythms.

Gotan Project

I’m in love with them. I would describe their music as a Latin world-beat sound. It’s transcendent, moody and very percussive. Part of it was recorded in Paris and part of it in Buenos Aires. I’ve always been drawn to the Latin culture and collect South American and Mexican folk art. When I was growing up, we lived in Santiago, Chile, and Mexico City. “Lunático” (Ya Basta!/Science & Melodie) may well be the sexiest album I’ve ever listened to, and yet it’s so ethereal. It’s very global; there is a very erotic kind of beat supporting an exquisitely seductive, warm female vocal. I can’t say enough about them.

Lila Downs

She’s a beautiful Mexican woman and an academically trained artist who has rediscovered her roots. Here is a young girl with an old soul giving a nod to traditional Mexican folk music, ballads and rancheros and bringing them to a new audience. Her music is colorful and soulful, and she has been blessed with a gorgeous voice. The songs on “La Cantina” (Narada/EMI) are all in Spanish and include the English translations. On one of the songs she sings about how to make mole sauce.

Hem

They had another album before this that I liked, so I bought this one. I listened to “Funnel Cloud” (Waveland/Nettwerk) and was drawn in more each time I listened to it. There’s something about the melodies; they just feel very genuine to me. It’s the kind of record that doesn’t jump out at you right away. It grows on you. The majority of stuff I’ve really been blown away by has been international music. The last time I was blown away by a contemporary Caucasian singer-songwriter was when I heard Ryan Adams. I think in this day and age it’s important to reach out across the globe. We could all stand to be a lot more globally aware, get out of our own backyard.

Comets on Fire

They’re from Santa Cruz, Calif., and with the album “Avatar” (Sub Pop), they twist the psychedelic kaleidoscope of music’s past and turn it into something completely new. Imagine if the Allman Brothers met Queens of the Stone Age over at the Stooges’ house. And that’s just for starters.

Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

Peasant garb?

She wasn't coming back on her own. "Where's Lu?" a woman, apparently a manager, was asking. "We're late." Lu was last seen standing behind the outdoor stage, just after the rain had soaked the parking lot, flipping through a thick black binder of song lyrics, taking sheets out, putting them back in. The band looked nervous and stalled by tuning yet again. "Are you ready, Lu?" the woman asked. "I have to go to the bathroom," Lu said. They looked over at the line of Johnny-on-the-Spots. "No way," Lu said. She closed the binder and headed out the back of the lot, toward a bar.

nice voice

New album streaming on NPR:

http://www.npr.org/2014/09/21/348713419/first-listen-lucinda-williams-down-where-the-spirit-meets-the-bone

the new double album is phantastic. quite dark. a slow, muddy river approaching the sea. her voice is kind of broken but the music and the band (bill frisell, david sutton, greg leisz, val mccallum, butch norton) are ace. te blues "doors of heaven" is incredibly dense and moody.

http://www.npr.org/2016/01/27/464433522/first-listen-lucinda-williams-the-ghosts-of-highway-20

I'm one of the many who sorta gave up on her after being disappointed too many times, but this new one is, as you say, phantastic. To me, it's her Time Out Of Mind, or maybe her Wrecking Ball; a "statement" record that succeeds because of how seemingly not eager to please it is. The longer tunes on here--the title track, "Louisiana Story"--are some of my favorite music she's made in years. Someone said this is as much Frisell's record as Lucinda's, and though I wouldn't go quite that far (he's conspicuously absent on half the songs on the second disc), he brings a lot to these songs beyond the clock-punching I think he can sometimes be guilty of. The guitar nerd in me also really loves how the two guitars are separated left and right. Just like Fugazi! As I get to know the album better, I absolutely plan to spend some time listening to it hard-panned. That's just my idea of fun, I guess.

Also, this is a double CD that comes with a t-shirt (at least it at my local indie shop) for $9.99! Can't really beat that.

That's good to hear, I will check this one out -- there was one or two there that I thought were just kinda bad...

Likewise. Have been steering clear of her for decades but that description sounds like it's time to come out of the bunker.

The Lucinda Williams album has gone off of NPR because of you. Elliott Smith too.

But some singles streaming elsewhere. Hard to stop thinking I'm listening to recent Bob Dylan.

I can't stand the new title track. Can she please stops slurring?

Is it an affectation or a genuine physical affliction?

Wait, this is a second double album with Frisell et al?I liked the last one ok, the first in a while, maybe since ... "Essence?" But that was largely because it felt like a little effort had been made after several years of coasting. Good to hear that this is (may be) a major work.

Hm, s/t is not streaming.

Wow, what a great guitar record this turns out to be. And yeah, man, does she refuse to enunciate. Wake up, Lucinda!

I liked parts of Blessed and Down Where The Spirit Meets The Bone, but I was so bored by this one that I gave up five songs in. Might go back and give it another shot later--does it ever pick up, or is the whole thing a drowsy blues crawl?

Tbf, if there was no Lucinda it would sound not unlike some of Frisell's Americana records.

I liked Down Where the Spirit Meets the Bone but I haven't loved anything since Car Wheels. I'll give the new one a chance.

Agreed 100% on her vocal affectations, which can be extreme. I trace it back to a duet she did with Elvis Costello, There's a Story In Your Voice. She sounds like she's parodying herself. Her first line sounds like "Wuuunce I Tuuuhoold Yew Faaiiiry Tayellz"

I was listening to "Essence" the other day, and I know it was pretty underrated when it came out, not least because "Car Wheels" was so massively overrated, but I think "Essence" might be her best record. At the very least this is one of the best songs called "Blue:"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D0_AVhvdpgw

yeah i think that is my fave of hers.

Of her guitar army doubles, I dug most of Down Where The Spirit Meets The Bone but thought it should have been even closer to the bone, ditching a few fatty clunkers, especially the endless closer, but it's easy to skip, they all are of course---then Ghosts of Highway 20 I tempted to say is an exorcism or six, but really it's how to live with the ghosts you can't shake, lighting up the barn, the sweatlodge, smoke 'em if you got 'em. Woody Guthrie's "House of Earth," completed by Lucinda, is not one that can be finished, with its shifting, going deeper and sidewise and up a little (the slurs totally work in this ballad, and I'm totally used to them after all these years anyway).
Re-recorded Sweet Old World, now This Sweet Old World, with re-recorded, prev. unreleased material from the original SOW sessions, is real good too, though I haven't done any comparative listening.
Next up: a collab w Charles LLoyd and the Marvels, awright,

"House of Earth" is on Ghosts of Highway 20, and an example of how she can still go guitar armyless when necessary.

Vanished Gardens (the album w/Charles LLoyd and the Marvels) is really good stuff.

Indeed it is. I especially like the re-do of "Dust."

beautifully desolate lyrics, had never heard that one before.

I stick to the sweet old world of her first few albums.

From before the stroke?

I know nothing about her life.

Was joking. Don’t know if there was such an event, assume there probably wasn’t, it’s just that she sings as if there was.

Glad to see World Without Tears here. I like it every bit as much as Car Wheels.

I know a lot of people think she's spent at this point, but there are some gems to be found among her recent albums: "A Kiss Like Your Kiss," in particular, is stunning.

At the very least her most recent albums *sound* great.

I also got off the bus after West (which contained one of her best ever songs, "What If?") and I highly doubt she'll make another great record. The re-recording of Sweet Old World was terrible.

Saw Lucinda with Charles Lloyd and the Marvels featuring Bill Frisell, Greg Leisz and more tonight for free at the Library of Congress. Sounded good. I haven’t heard the album yet. Lloyd’s horn playing worked well with her ragged slurred vocals. They did Dylan’s Masters of War, plus a bunch of songs from the album.

Finally listened to some of the album this morning (after seeing the gig last night). A real collaboration. She defers a lot to Lloyd (who once played with Howlin Wolf among others). At the gig last night, Lloyd played piano on a classical feeling composition with local DC violinist Chelsea Green to open the night, then he and the band played for quite a bit, and finally Lucinda came out to join them.

Lloyd (who once played with Howlin Wolf among others)

Err, he's also had a rather esteemed career as a leader and released dozens of incredible records. Playing with Howlin Wolf when he was in high school is hardly his claim to fame

Caught her in-store performance at Rough Trade tonight. It looked like she was recovering from a recent illness (like a bad cold, the flu or even COVID) because she had a coughing fit on the first number and already came prepared with throat spray and a tall hot beverage that was pretty full (she didn't need to tip it back much every time she took a sip). So not in the best shape for a performance, but the new songs came off great, including the new album's rocking arrangement of Bob Marley's "So Much Trouble In The World" (Mavis wasn't there FYI) and the band was especially great. One thing that stood out was the touch of frailness and unsteadiness in her voice. I thought that was due to the circumstances, but listening to the album now, it's actually there on the same songs played in-store, it's just that we were hearing her live without any of the echo or effects applied to her vocal on the album. It kind of gives everything an added punch, as if the stakes were heightened with a greater feeling of persevering through pain and exhaustion.

She had that stroke in 2020. When I saw her in 2023 she had not yet returned to playing guitar regularly as I recall.

Oh yeah, I know - I actually saw her at one of her first shows following the stroke, opening for Bonnie Raitt. Surprisingly, a lot of people in the audience didn't know, because towards the end of her set, someone asked why she wasn't playing the guitar, and she said "I can't yet, I had a stroke..." Before she could continue, a large part of the audience audibly gasped or moaned. At the time, she also needed help to get around, and that was also the case last night, but she still sings great and did the last couple of times I saw her. (Didn't pull out any throat spray either, which is why it seemed like a clear giveaway that she caught a bug recently.)

https://ottawa.citynews.ca/2023/10/09/lucinda-williams-talks-about-writing-and-performing-rock-n-roll-after-her-stroke/

The 2020 stroke affected her left side and therefore her ability to play guitar which she had previously used to write songs herself. With exercise she has gotten some left hand strength back, but per this article is collaborating more with others in both songwriting and at gigs as her strength to play the guitar well enough is not back yet

She did a show last night at her club on the LES. I wasn't there - it sold out by the time I found out, and probably fast - but she was supposedly much better, sounding great and looking much happier. She still isn't playing the guitar, but Doug Pettibone and Marc Ford have been really good, leaning more into a blues-rock sound. Something about the new album feels very '60s to me, but so far, I found it very enjoyable. (I don't think the album's "officially" out yet, but to get into the Rough Trade show, you had to purchase the CD or LP, all signed by Lucinda, and they handed those out as you went in.)

That place always seems to be pretty crowded when she is not playing there.

Her latest album World's Gone Wrong is not on Spotify, but can be streamed on Apple Music, Amazon Music, and heard on YouTube

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKqP3vFmgN4

I finally got around to it, and it's great!

Wait she did a re-record of Sweet Old World?

Yup! I still prefer the original though.

"Six Blocks Away" is my jam

Actually a lot of those songs are.

The original is still the greatest