Lucinda Williams follows Ryan Adams' Whiskeytown Swansong as the second album from the new Nashville label Lost Highway and, boy, has this label made another outrageously astonishing introduction. I've been a Lucinda Williams fan for many years, and this one has beaten out my every possible expectation. To be truthful I wasn't even too sure about the critically acclaimed and award winning, Car Wheels On a Gravel Road. It didn't have the cohesiveness of Sweet Old World. Cohesive is a word that Essence could be wrapped in. It holds together as a gentle, introspective, heartbreak of an album. It is the blues in feeling but think of Emmylou's Wrecking Ball as a soundcheck, and here is Essence.
Indeed, producer Charlie Sexton, a member of Bob Dylan's current band and an artist in his own right, if a little less meteorically so than the predictions once were, has given himself a whole new future in the stellar job he's done here. With his own guitar adding little edges to Bo Ramsey's masterful performance, we get a deep if minimalist accompaniment to Lucinda's voice that is assured as ever but cracks at times in the emotion of songs such as "Steal Your Love" and "Out of Touch". Lyrically, too, Williams is not wordy but the few words she uses are with all the poetic economy of her poetic genes (her dad is a famous poet). She conjures the feelings of loss and loneliness with fresh emotional impact in a genre of music where we thought it had all been done.
And there is some sense of redemption. God pops up, and Lucinda wants to get right with Him. She is also looking for Christlike forgiveness in the closing "Broken Butterflies," where she concludes the piece by singing "And bleed the way Christ did, and fix the broken butterflies". Blood on the tracks indeed, and that blood bringing a sweet, ripe and costly victory.
Lost and yearning; tender and beautiful; love torn and spiritually redeemed; the yang to Ryan Adams' yin.
Other coverage for this album
The Phantom Tollbooth 2001Reviewed by Jeffrey OverstreetJust the first few lines of "Lonely Girls" and she's got you. Lucinda Williams doesn't need many words to convince you that she knows what she's talking about. It could be loneliness (and it probably is). It could be longing (and yeah, it most likely is). It could be pain, a heart in pieces, or those embarrassingly blunt words of desire that you've always wanted to say to someone but dignity…Similar sounding releases
1999Bruce CockburnBreakfast in New Orleans, Dinner in Timbuktu
2003RalstonCarwreck Conversations
1999SpainShe Haunts My Dreams
2001Ticklepenny CornerSunday's Best
2003The WaifsUp All Night
1998Victoria WilliamsMusings of a Creekdipper
