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| Lucinda Williams 'Essence' (2001) |
| By yvette douglass |
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Since I am still feverish from the stomach flu and the release of "Essence", I decided that now would be a good time to review the new Lucinda Williams release.
These songs weave and spin through your heart and whisper in your ear like they could be on a soundtrack to a Dorothy Allison novel. It takes the listener on a snakey achey journey.
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"Lonely girls" drops a tapestry of heartache for you. Lucinda points out "...heavy blankets cover lonely girls". "Steal Your Love" flirts with you and pulls you in closer by your collar singing, " I don't need a knife and I don't need a gun, I know how to steal your love".
"I Envy The Wind" starts kissing you and you become more riveted/intoxicated and then you go home with her and are thrown into pure ecstasy with "blue" singing "raven feather shiny and black, a touch of blue glistening down her back." in a vibrato laden voice that has you entranced and bewitched. Yes, these songs are about longing, but I feel pretty satisfied just with the strength of desire spilling out of my speakers.
Then, the next morning you roll - with a slight love hangover - awake when "Out of Touch" nudges you. She whips you into considering how on a small scale we lose touch with certain people, but within the macrocosm we humans have become so divided.
Well the affair is over with "Are You Down". This one is like an answer to "Stand By Your Man" but without being overtly feminist and with out taking a victim hood stance - not to mention poetic. Lu says it straight no chaser.. "nothin' will make me take you back, are you down babe, down with that"
Her mourning process has begun as she remembers you. In the title track she reveals "I am waiting in my car, I am waiting at this bar, i am waiting for your essence". This song rocks! Lovesick blues no doubt!
And the absence of you runs deeper still. "Reason To Cry" is very Nashville-esque, which is apparently Lu's new city of residence. But her roots just go deep period. No matter where she plants her cute tush, she is home!
"Get Right With God" is a fat tongue far in cheek tune about holy rollers, kissing snakes and such, and talkin' bout Satan's slaughter. It's cute and sassy.
"Bus to Baton Rouge" gives you a peek into some ones haunted childhood. Some things speakable, others we all know. Perhaps it was Lu's, perhaps it was yours....
I am not even going to touch "Broken Butterflies". It is something you all have to experience for yourselves. No preempting. It is poetically resting in the vein of Patti Smith, but it's Lucinda! The greatest thing since blocks of pink popcorn and sand between your toes at the county fair!
These songs are so alive that you don't need no flippin' music video to accompany it to steal your imagination. The music is sparse and treated like paint to canvas, with much consideration. (In other words egos seemed to be in check!) The artwork on the CD itself says "Para Toda" - for all. And it really is that intimate!
This girl is a poet and has a voice that reveals so much emotion, wisdom, and sincerity that it is childlike...and thank god for that!
I give it 5 cowgirl hats!
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