Lucinda Williams faces life in ‘Stories from a rock’n’roll heart’

“Stories from a rock’n’roll heart”

lucinda williams

Highway 20 / Endless / Popstock!

rock-folk

★★★★

He produces works such as the sharpest encounter of music with life and events. “Stories from a rock’n’roll heart”an album in lucinda williams sings to her motivating sources and the mystery surrounding song making. Life-giving work, wrapped in a halo of victory given the delicate path of a clinical order that preceded it.

From the hurricane that destroyed your home, from covid-19 and worst of all… stroke in November 2020, which left him with engine constraints on his left side that he was slowly trying to overcome. Nothing could stop him: He was already performing again a few weeks after suffering a stroke, and could be seen and admired at the Azkena Rock Festival a few days ago.

Lucinda Williams, wounded, but never defeatedwho (for now) can’t play the guitar, but as a survivor, he conveys the truth with his voice, and flaunts himself as a writer in the beautiful and challenging ‘stories’ he tells us at the age of 70. he opens the classic rock album la Stones or The Faces called “Let’s get the band back together” where he sighs for the old soul of the “gang” andn Accompanied by colleagues like Margo Price and Buddy Miller.

art available

There’s a lot in this record A tribute to the music that fascinated him at the age of 12and songs like ‘Rock’n’roll Heart’, which refer to the “working class boy in a defeated city” who can give meaning to his life thanks to a guitar, is hard to remain indifferent. And if you have “a rock’n’roll heart” then when you say “you don’t need to be so cunning/you don’t need to be a work of art anymore” because it may be within you to convey emotions. anyone’s access. sounds Bruce Springsteen and Patti Scialfa‘New York return’, as in another remarkable number.

Williams sings longingly the (alien) melodies of his life in the ‘Jukebox’ (with sweet echo) Angel Olsen as the second voice) and ‘Where the song finds me’ turns the song into a poetic character. He summons his two long-lost friends, Tom Petty in ‘Stolen moments’ and Bob Stinson (from The Replaces) in ‘Hum’s liqueur’. Searching for the melee of rock, resting mid-tempoes, occasionally paying attention to acoustic strings and the touch of ‘pedal steel’ and all this with knowledgeable accompaniments: drummer ‘heartbreaker’ Steve Ferrone; keyboard player Reese Wynans (a member of Stevie Ray Vaughan’s Double Trouble) or the unfortunate steve makeyBassist for Pulp (and Dolly Parton).

And as a culmination, ‘It will never fade’ in which it is seen face to face with depression and in the words of Neil Young: “I’ll never fade” repeats to us, merging with his craft and the song itself, and missing a life lesson from us. Jordi Bianciotto

Other albums of the week

After the Galician quartet pays homage to the New Order in that enormous (and somewhat twisted) opening song called ‘Lone Star’, Iberian noise rock figure with a dozen songs full of contrasts (to the production, the indescribable Carlos Hernandez) this slope between epic and rageBetween My Bloody Valentine and Primal Scream to talk about topics like the cost of success and the pressures of the industry. Rafael Tapounet

He is called the author of the pearl of the eighties (not always mentioned) “Rattlesnakes” He synthesized the art of singing by combining electronic maturity concerns And melodic instinct of the pop bard. As in “Guesswork” (2017), two exCommotions (Blair Cowan and Neil Clark). Look out for topics like “The idiot,” a representative of emotional robotics, with scenes from Bowie and Iggy’s Berlin. JB

She sings “I said things I didn’t believe, I did things without myself” Meshell Ndegeocello in the emotional ‘Gatsby’. dir-dir “The Omnicord Truth Book” The most confessional album by a writer who always puts himself forward with bare breasts? Once again, Ndegeocello search honestly inside – identity, wounds – but also outside: ‘Virgo’ is pure Afrofuturism. The range of collaborations of the jazz pianist Jason Moran to the singer Joan as a Policewomanadds variety to a music garden rich in textures and rhythms. Roger Rock