Review #98: Car Wheels on a Gravel Road, Lucinda Williams
#98: Car Wheels on a Gravel Road, Lucinda Williams
This might sound weird but this is the point in the project where doing this started to feel like the quest for the meaning of life. Both times I listened to this felt very significant. I felt like I was Indiana Jones excavating caves for alien messages.
Lucinda Williams seems to me kind of what Lurleen Lumpkin from The Simpsons would be like if she embraced her edge. This album took her three years to record, essentially because she kept being unhappy with her vocals and she kept bringing different people onboard.
Every so often I think I hate country music but I think grimy country like Lucinda Williams might bring me closer to what it is that people love about it. She reminds me a lot of Alanis and Liz Phair, but, like, if they lived on a ranch instead of in the city.
FAVORITE SONGS:
“Right In Time” — I love the dude singing harmony on this.
“Car Wheels On A Gravel Road” — I love scene-setting songs, it makes me feel like it’s a concept album. And isn’t this kind of a concept album?
“2 Kool 2 Be 4-Gotten” — You can’t depend on anything, really/ There’s no promises, there’s no point. That’s the most pop-punk thing I’ve ever heard, I love it.
“Drunken Angel” — I can’t remember ever enjoying a country album so much, other than Shania Twain’s Come On Over (#300).
“Concrete And Barbed Wire” — I love me a good prison blues.
“Can’t Let Go” — This was the first and only song I recognized immediately, and it rocks!
“I Lost It” — I don’t want nothing if I have to fake it.
“Still I Long For Your Kiss” — This title is so dramatic, I love it.
“Joy” — I think Lucinda Williams might just be great with song titles. I love when they have a cheerful title for their angry songs.
“Jackson” — I heard this song and had to learn it on the guitar.
LEAST FAVORITE SONGS:
“Greenville” — At last, the too-slow-country-ballad I knew was coming.
IS RS FULL OF IT?
No, this album literally made me reconsider country music/my life completely.
