In the American Idiom
Lucinda Williams finally earns the
respect her 'Essence' commands
metroactive.com:80/metro/williams-0125.html
By Gina Arnold
ONE HATES to sound like one of those
humorless, conspiracy-addled feminist types,
but every now and then, the truth will out, and
the fact of the matter remains: If Bob Dylan had
been a woman, he might have had a career
much like that of Lucinda Williams. That is to
say, instead of being embraced by the
intelligentsia at the tender age of 22, it would
have taken him 18 years to get his first
major-label recording contract, 20 to get his first
Grammy and 47 to realize his talent in a way
that the rest of the world could appreciate.
It hardly seems fair--and yet, there you have it.
What other excuse is there than gender
inequality? Because, for some reason, Williams,
who has recently been called "America's best
songwriter" by writers at Newsweek, Rolling
Stone and pretty much every other major media
outlet, has taken that long to become as
acclaimed as Dylan.
And yet she and Dylan have much in common.
For example, both artists began by singing folk
(Lucinda's first LP consisted of blues covers, as
did Dylan's). Both are in love with American
idioms, poetry and the outlaw life, although
Dylan's outlawry is more theory than fact, while
Williams', alas, borders on reality. And both are
worshiped--downright worshiped--by a fan base
that sees in their lyrics a beauty, a truth and a
significance about life that most modern music
lacks.
But there the similarity may end. Like most
women, Williams writes a lot about personal
relationships, which may or may not be her
own. Dylan doesn't. And although he often likes
to fantasize about a wild childhood with the
circus or worse, Dylan actually grew up in a
stable household in Minnesota before making it
big as a "Bohemian" in Greenwich Village.
Williams' childhood was truly Bohemian--and a
lot more trying. The daughter of a famed, but
itinerant poet, Miller Williams, and a mother
with mental problems, she has lived the kind of
poverty-stricken, wandering, heartbreak-raddled
life that results in songs that reek with emotional
authenticity.
Technically, Williams writes what is called
"contemporary folk"--which is to say, music that
is based on the blues but sounds more like the
mean reds, and the result has been a career
which has slipped through the cracks of the
industry, often almost disappearing as her work
is dismissed by the business as being "too
uncommercial."
UNTIL NOW, THAT IS. For many years, the
secret pleasure of the critical cognoscenti whose
main income was due to covers of her songs
(Mary Chapin Carpenter did "Passionate
Kisses," Tom Petty did "Changed the Locks"),
Williams has finally reached the apex of fame
and fortune: she's performed on Saturday Night
Live, been profiled in The New Yorker and
bought herself a brand-new truck.
She may not be a household word yet, but she's
gone one better: two years ago, her record Car
Wheels on a Gravel Road earned a Grammy
award and acclaim beyond measure. Now, at
the age of 47, she is the reigning queen of
rock--and a sex symbol of sorts to men and
women who aren't really interested in the nubile
preteen breastiness of most of today's pop
superstars.
Williams, a Louisiana native, often performs her
songs clad in a tighty-tight New York Dolls
T-shirt and leather pants, her bleached hair
tucked under a cowboy hat. It's an image that
has done much to help her be noticed by
magazines like Spin and Rolling Stone--and it
also gives curious listeners a clue that her music,
which sometimes gets termed "country," isn't
exactly what it seems on the surface.
Her music is steeped in the sounds of the
American South, but it's not the corny country
South of Nashville and the Grand Ol' Opry but
the more literary South of writers like Flannery
O'Connor, William Faulkner, Eudora Welty and
Walker Percy. Or at least it would be, if those
writers had written more about sex.
In fact, Williams' new record, Essence (Lost
Highway Records) has a number of sex songs
on it, a circumstance that can only serve to heat
up her already red-hot m.o. But the sex on
Essence isn't gratuitous. If anything, it is sweet
and sad, the two adjectives that best describe
Williams herself and the adjectives she uses to
describe the songs sung by lonely girls, a group
she counts herself among. In that particular song
("Lonely Girls"), Williams drones a mere 21
words over and over at a snail's pace, but she
gets away with it, because her voice--or rather
her singing persona--and her music are so
intensely personal.
Lots of the songs on Essence are similarly
simply sung. "Steal Your Love," "I Envy the
Wind" and "Blue" all take place in the same
extremely quiet, extremely slow meter. The CD
case notes five different instruments on the
last-named track, including bass, violin, viola
and various guitars, but you'd never notice them
to speak of--it sounds like an acoustic, or even a
capella, number.
The record was produced by the gorgeous guitar
whiz kid Charlie Sexton, who must be all of 25
now (and incidentally, plays guitar with Dylan in
his off-time), and he has done a wonderful job
achieving a subtlety that eluded Mitch Froom,
the producer of Williams' last LP. His lead
guitar work on songs like "Are You Down" and
"Essence" is lovely as well.
IN ADDITION to its spare and unobtrusive
instrumentation, Essence downplays some of
the complex storytelling and depressing
narratives that have made previous LPs--Sweet
Old World, Car Wheels on a Gravel Road and
Lucinda Williams--both memorable and
somewhat torturous to listen to. There are some
striking images here--"Rain turns the dirt into
mud/Warm and messy, like your love"--but in
general, Essence is about mood, rather than
incident.
That mood is somber and reflective, and at
times self-destructive, but not unattractive for all
that. Still, people who wonder why Lucinda
Williams has never had a big hit can stop right
now. The lady is a downer, and in general,
downers don't sell. It isn't until the seventh
track, which happens to be the title cut and
single, that the tempo picks up--going from
snail's pace to snake trot--and an actual chorus
and catchy tune appear.
The song oozes sex, but not necessarily in a
positive way. "Baby, sweet baby, I want to feel
your breath/Even though you like to flirt with
death/Baby, sweet baby, can't get
enough/Please come find me and help me get
fucked up." It's a typical Williams romance with
a sexy guy who is some kind of bad news in the
singer's life.
But as scary as the song is, it marks a change in
the album's overall tone. From there on in,
things lighten up a little. Instead of the blues,
Lucinda starts singing other
idioms--bluegrass-tinged gospel, for example,
("Get Right With God," a song about
Pentecostal snake-handling) and plain old folk
("Bus to Baton Rouge" and "Reason to Cry").
None of these songs are what I'd call cheery,
but they are quite beautiful in their evocation of
emotion, time and place.
Of course, singing along to Lucinda Williams
would be a bit of a sacrilege, since her metier
really is one of personal artistry, that is, total
immersion in her, well, her essence. You either
find her life, her career, her music and her
stories incredibly romantic and appealing--or
you don't.
But even if you don't find her sad, sweet,
fucked-up persona particularly romantic, you
have to admire her for being such a genuine
artist. What she brings to popular music is the
same thing that other one-of-a-kind singer/
songwriters, like Hank Williams, Tom Waits and
Elvis Costello do--only being a woman makes
that achievement all the more remarkable. |
