Release Date: 08 April, 2003
Audio CD
Tracks
- Fruits of My Labor
- Righteously
- Ventura
- Bleeding Fingers
- Over Time
- Those Three Days
- Atonement
- Sweet Side
- Minneapolis
- People Talkin'
- American Dream
- World Without Tears
- Words Fell
|
Rating 4.0
lacks cohesion or visionUnfortunately Lucinda Williams does not live up to her 1998,"Car Wheels on a Gravel Road". Meandering, scattered, and often self-indulgent, some very good songs get lost in that mix... Moreover, her voice gets irritatingly grating at times (or is it the studio mixing?). However, fans will enjoy it, being still well above average for the singer-songwriter genre.Scratches and BurnsWorld Without Tears is either most cynically named or just plain wrong: It is about a world with tears. Williams writes lyrics that scratch the furniture and stab the heart over and over again. The music is very melodic alt-country or folk, I guess, and always outpaces the lyrics, almost as if the happy music and the sad lyrics compliment each other in some way. Springsteen has some songs to that effect (think of born to run). In fact this album reminds me of the boss. That is, if the boss were a woman who'd been around the blocks of love three or four times. He certainly could have wrote a song like "Those Three Days", and that's a huge compliment.
Think of what Sheryl Crow would sound like with some more edge and a few more scars. That's Lucinda Williams, as much as can be described in words. Probably Lucinda's best yetIf you're not familiar with Lucinda Williams, it may take a few listenings to get used to her style, but once you "discover" her, she's pure Alt-Country as it comes.
She's an excellent songwriter and I like the way her CDs are recorded: the first take from her band is the final take--that's why at times it seems a little rough here and there, but that's what I like and it fits her style. This album features nice ballads and yes, Lucinda is even raping on a couple of songs. And the edgy "Real Live bleeding fingers and broken guitar strings" gets you going after the beautiful "Ventura." "Those three days" is a thoughtful song, but I didn't like the use of a four-letter word twice which was unnecessary and the only incident in this regard throughout the CD. Also the "American Dream" is an interesting take. To some degree there's a negative undertone on this CD, which cannot be taken that serious, and which is balanced by the soulful ballads. It's an artsy CD and it is quite interesting. |
|
