Album review: Lucinda Williams

Lucinda Williams has long ago cornered the market with a plaintive southern guitar sound that was so powerful you felt your organs rearranged as you listened. Her distinctive gravelly voice (a female Bob Dylan?) and style is firmly rooted in the tradition of country blues. She has had lofty acclaim from her peers, Emmy Lou Harris, Mary ChapinCarpenter et al.

Williams also got a lot of praise for her 1998 album Car Wheels on a Gravel Road while Blessed from 2011 is an even better album, though some songs contain the germ of a condition that plagues her new double album Down Where the Spirit Meets the Bone: self-consciousness. Her current offering has not a lot of subtlety and is far too direct.