1 month ago
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There’s the risk of sliding from songwriting to rushed musical op ed pieces that stale as soon as the news cycle moves on. Secondly, even the greatest of finger-pointing tunes can risk alienating listeners who are looking for a momentary escape from the madness and misery that is forever being fed to our screens.
Legendary songwriter Lucinda Williams' 16th outing, World’s Gone Wrong, avoids both pitfalls. Coming across like a condensed excerpt from one of Willy Vlautin’s novels, the instantly and insistently infectious title track (hints of past collaborator Bruce Springsteen’s blue-collar anthems, perhaps) catalogues the multiple troubles faced by a working-class couple caught in an increasingly turbulent country where safety nets are a luxury afforded only to the privileged few. Instead of bitterness or anger, however, the song emphasises resilience and resistance to despondency and apathy: better things are coming, if people can only stick together and keep hold of their essential goodness, even if the world around them has lost theirs. Elsewhere, the gritty, steady-rolling blues (think of ZZ Top at their vintage best) of “Black Tears” catalogues the unresolved injustices of US history with an unflinching rawness that might make the most fervent anti-‘wokeness’ commentator choke on their corndog. It doesn’t put too much of a strain on imagination to figure out who the spritely galloping “How Much Did You Get for Your Soul” might refer to.
Musically, producers Ray Kennedy and Tom Overby stick to the rootsy palette that has served Williams well since 1998’s Americana landmark Car Wheels on a Gravel Road. Apart from guest vocal spots for Norah Jones (on the beautifully shimmering country hymn closer “We’ve Come Too Far to Turn Around”) and Brittney Spencer, the focus is on Williams’s remarkable, road-roughened but richly expressive voice and the weaving guitars of Marc Ford (formerly of The Black Crowes) and Doug Pettibone. This simple rock and roll band set-up is capable of considerable range, from the low-lit shimmer of barroom testimonial “Low Life” to the haunted, powerfully charged expansiveness of “Freedom Song” and – best of all – an impassioned duet with the legendary Mavis Staples on a swaying version of Bob Marley’s “So Much Trouble In The World”, the lyrics of which (‘’you see men sailing on their ego trips/blast off on their spaceships/million miles from reality/no care for you, no care for me’’) seem uncannily prophetic 46 years after the song was first released.
Energised, focused, enraged yet also fully infused with the warmth of compassion and a wary hope for better things to come, World’s Gone Wrong manages to turn the Tennessee-based songwriter’s urgent dismay and anger at the socio-political chaos that is tearing America apart into genuinely impactful and affecting art that is likely to endure long after the final splinters of the current mess have been swept away.
English (US) · 