Consumer Guide Album

Lucinda Williams: Stories From a Rock N Roll Heart [Thirty Tigers, 2023]
Whatever you think of this undeniably gifted, notoriously headstrong singer/songwriter/bandleader whose 2020 Good Souls Better Angels remains one of the most scornful anti-Trump screeds to be set to music, the courage it took to create its belated follow-up just can't be denied. That's because the stroke she suffered just after Trump lost in 2020 compelled her to spend well over a year learning to walk and sing all over again--and then, because she has her pride oh yes she does, write these 10 new songs and I bet others just to put her performance skills to the test. Peppy openers dubbed "Let's Get the Band Back Together" and "New York Comeback" get that job done quick; willful closers called "Where the Song Will Find Me" and "Never Gonna Fade Away" are her version of a lifetime guarantee. In between "Last Call for the Truth" and "Hum's Liquor" celebrates her chosen Nashville. Too bad, I feel, that in an accident of timing her comeback emerged almost simultaneously with the Covenent School massacre and the racist political powermongering that has dishonored Tennessee so shamefully in its wake. This has to have made the record hard to fully enjoy in its moment despite the already written but all too general "This Is Not My Town." Since then it seems nobody's advised her to rev up her self-righteousness for the occasion. Somebody should. A-