Down Where the Spirit Meets the Bone

The first thing you notice about Lucinda Williams on her new album, Down Where the Spirit Meets the Bone, is the voice. My god that sounds like a woman who has traveled some hard roads! Scratchy and drawling, the closest male equivalent I can think of was Tom Waits, who always sounds like he needs a cough lozenge.

But the voice suits the music perfectly on this double disc set. The songs are bleak but hopeful, and if Williams sounds like she's down she's certainly not out. The first song, "Compassion," based on a poem by her father, Miller Williams, sets forth a manifesto of sorts:

"Have compassion for every one you meet
Even if they don't want it."

This is good to remember, given the despair on the rest of Disc 1. In two consecutive directional songs, we get an old-fashioned rip on the limousine liberals in "East Side of Town":

"You think  you're mister do-good
but you don't know what you're talking about
When you find yourself in my neighborhood
You can't wait to get the hell out
You wanna see what it means to suffer
You wanna see what it means to be down
Then why don't you come over
to the east side of town."

This is followed by "West Memphis," which is certainly about the West Memphis 3 murder case, which has been the stuff of three documentaries:

"They didn't like the music I listened to
The didn't like the way I dressed
They set me up with a forced confession
I never had a chance
They threw the book at me
At my expense
They got no common sense
But that's the way they do things
in West Memphis"

There are also some angry love songs, such as "Cold Day in Hell" and "Wrong Number," and a blast at almost everyone in "Foolishness:"

"All of this foolishness in my life, don't need it
What I do in my own time
Is none of your business and all of mine"

Disc 2 isn't as strong, but it does have my favorite song on the record and the most upbeat, "Stowaway in Your Heart":

"Thank you for giving me
A place to keep my love
I don't need nothing special
none of that stuff
I'm a stowaway in your heart
and that's enough"

Williams is a gumbo of folks and blues, and her band is top notch. This is a great record, and it reminds me that I once owned her equally good Car Wheels on a Gravel Road but I lost it somehow. Of course, I could always buy it again, but I still wonder where that went to.