Anybody foolish enough to think that the stroke Lucinda Williams suffered in 2020 would douse the fire in her will have been long regretting it; Stories from a Rock n Roll Heart followed three years later – along with an autobiography, Don’t Tell Anybody the Secrets I Told You, whilst her sixteenth album finds the veteran singer as unflinching as ever.
World’s Gone Wrong cuts deep into the wounds that America has inflicted on itself, the titular opening track slipping into the troubled lives of a blue collar couple sliding inexorably down society’s ladder. A story told with empathy and no little anger, it’s a song that burns with an energy rarely found in artists in their eighth decade, one worthy of the definitive working class rocker Bruce Springsteen himself.
As a further mark of this desire to push herself there’s a reggaefied cover of Bob Marley’s So Much Trouble In the World which is tackled with Mavis Staples, but Williams returns to more familiar ground on the blues laden, anti-racism manifesto Black Tears. There’s room for some nastier fun too on the rocker How Much Did You Get for Your Soul, but it’s the finale We’ve Come Too Far to Turn Around – another duet, this time with Norah Jones – that offers hope amongst the wreckage. Still very much with us, on World’s Gone Wrong Lucinda Williams shows us her guitar is far from ready to give up the fight.
You can read a full review here.
The Voice Of Unreason 