Album Review: Lucinda Williams – West

Lucinda Williams – West

Where do I start? A little disclosure, I’m not a big fan of this album, so if you’re a die hard Williams fanatic you should probably stop reading.

West begins with Are You Alright, a decent song, but not the type of song you’d probably want to open an album with, which could probably be said of the first three songs. Fancy Funeral comes along and slows down an already slow start.

Then comes Unsuffer Me which reminds me of one of those slow motion scenes in an action movie where they remove all the foreground noise and play the music to dramatize the movie some, it looks cool and sounds good in the movie, but doesn’t work on its own. Everything Has Changed, Where Is My Love?, Rescue, and What If are some more decent tracks, but after a while everything starts to sound similar which makes it hard to stay interested.

Wrap My Head Around That has a somewhat odd intro that quickly deteriorates into nine minutes of my life that I will never get back.

The Americana Music Association defines Americana as American roots music music based on the traditions of country, but also says that it includes influences ranging from folk to bluegrass to blues and beyond. Having such a broad range of influences makes it hard to decide whether an album would appeal to your musical tastes when it’s classified as Americana. However, I think it’s safe to say that West can attribute much of its influences to folk music rather than traditional country.

The album possesses a few decent songs, but they’re masked by the mediocrity of the surrounding tracks. While listening to select tracks on their own or in a mix album might not be a bad idea, I wouldn’t recommend listening to West straight through unless you want to be lulled to sleep or sent into a bout of temporary depression. You have to hand it to Williams though, she’s accomplished something with her albums that most artists never do, she makes the listener feel something…even if it’s not all good. I do have to admit that some of the songs grew on me during subsequent listens, but not enough to boost the overall appeal of the album.

I give it a generous two and half stars.

Other’s Reviews:
The Austin Chronicle
San Antonio Express
Hard-coreTroubadours
Paste Magazine
Pitchfork
liveDaily
HickoryWind