Friday 26 March 2010

Lucinda Williams [Car Wheels On A Gravel Road]

As the picture shows, this is one of those dirt road albums, full of American roots music, the booklet cover is just right for the music, a cheaply built wooden house built down a dirt road, i've been in a self-built house like this in Maine, no electricity or running water!, what an adventure that was.

Lucinda Williams is now 57!, isn't anyone getting younger anymore? ha ha, this is really her breakthrough album, necessarily about the major things in life like love, death, friendship etc, but more about incidental things like tattoos, screen doors, taking up serpents, graffiti, barbed wire etc, it's amazing how Williams can paint these pictures of real life, with real issues, the drab really is exciting!, those singers who talk of the big things, like 'everyone hold hands' and world peace, end up being so superficially about nothing.

Well the track i enjoyed the most is track 9 'Metal Firecracker', the lead guitar of Gulf morlix really makes this track, it has a slight National Guitar resonance about it, also he sings harmony on the chorus, 'All i ask' is so powerful, and Lucinda Williams' emphasis on certain words, really makes it sound like she means what she singing about,

'Once you held me so tight
i thought i'd lose my mind
you said i rocked your world
you said it was for all time
you said that i would always be your girl'

i just sense a real emphasis on lose, like it's said with a little craziness [like she's lost her mind!], it's stuff like this which makes the album, she's not just a Singer, and a Poetess, but she's an Actress too!, plus if i might add my own take on it, 'fire' means on fire with love, and 'cracker' means crackers or going crazy, and even 'metal' is ZZ Top turned up real loud, she's on fire with love and going crazy with love.

Here's a group fronted by Lori Behrman singing Metal Firecracker on YouTube.