you know i have loved lucinda williams a lot for a long time. but not every single time out, and i guess i am just not feeling the new one, down where the spirit meets the bone. her virtues are related to her vices, as with so many of us. so first of all, sometimes she just tells you very flatly. this has worked great. here it often flops.
You got the power to make this mean ole world a better place.
You got the power to make this mean ole world a better place.
People say they hate you, try to kill you, while they're grinning in your face.
You got the power to make this mean ole world a better place.
Before you can have a friend, you gotta be one.
Before you can have a friend, you gotta be one.
You gotta do the right things, gotta jump on in and see that it gets done.
Before you can have a friend, you gotta be one,
she sings on 'everything but the truth'. um. 'have compassion for everyone you meet. for those you encounter, have compassion'. sometimes specifically when she's not on, lyrically or melodically, she seems to compensate with length, as on the unfortunate 'something wicked this way comes'.
but here's my specific complaint, and it applies also to her album little honey (2008): she sounds depressed and bitter, almost throughout, which is one reason all the inspirational-style lyrics ring false. she almost tries to reproduce 'sweet old world' in 'i look at the world', but the amazing affirmation that stopped the heart the first time is just gone.
judging from her lyrics, lucinda williams has devoted her life to romantic love. nothing is greater or truer according to her songs, even as she suffers again and again. maybe now she's suffered too damn much from romantic love, and anyway, it is hard to know how to deal with these things, quite, in your sixties. not like a princess twirling around in a new dress, that's for sure. she seems to have followed this thing down the road to despair. i can understand how that happens to someone around our phase of life, but i don't necessarily like to listen to its incessant product. for example: "burning bridges" (one of the better songs); "east side of town" ("you wanna see what it means to suffer, you wanna see what it means to be down, then why don't you come over..."; well, when you put it like that... it's about a whining contest; she's literally arguing with her ex about who is more miserable); or the desperate slog through "cold day in hell"; etc.
[she's recycling her melodies here too, as elsewhere.]
it was predictable, because lucinda always devoted herself to love on the dark side: the guy was always ecstasy, then agony: a junkie, a suicide, a faithless but beautiful poet. it just could not end well. so the question is, now that it hasn't: watcha gonna do, sweetie? because you need to really reconcile yourself to your life now, or really learn its joys, if you are going to do your best work, and i really want you to do your best work, because your best work is the best there is.
"i need protection from the enemy of rock and roll", she sings. right. find your joy again, the joy "he took". and i would suggest that this joy is not going to be a young man anymore. maybe it never was. if you try that approach again, you will be even more embittered by the next album in 2016, if that's possible. the great stuff always came from you, lucy, not from your male muses. on the other hand, love could still be possible, and a question is: what can it be now, for your veteran's heart and ageing body? you're not alone in that dilemma; maybe you could speak for us. you are not going to fix the lucinda of 1980.
