Raw and Real

Listening to Blessed by Lucinda Williams is a lot like settling in with a good book, rich and deep, where each song is not a chapter but a story unto itself that demands attention and leaves me wishing it wouldn’t end. A long-respected song writer, Williams is adept at crafting songs that can cut straight to the bone.

She has a style that’s raw and unpolished like Steve Earle and Hank Williams, singing in a natural southern drawl and maintaining a loose feel. It’s part of what separates her from the pack. I get the sense that this is really Lucinda as she pulls from her deep well of personal truths and displays them to the world--naked and defenseless.

These are not mainstream radio songs with five second intros for those with short attention spans. Instead, these are good, solid vignettes that set you up with appropriately long intros the way an opening shot in a film establishes the setting, and primes you for what’s next. Nor do these compositions follow a traditional formula; many of them are more like poems set to music.

This album is not as rough and gritty as some of her past recordings. Songs run the gamut of mood and sensibility. There are rockers like “Convince Me,“ “Buttercup,” and the Rolling Stones-like “Seeing Black,” where I can easily imagine Keith Richards sitting in. There are the poetic songs like “Born to Be Loved,” “Soldier’s Song,” and “Blessed.” She gets tender on “Sweet Love” and “Kiss Like Your Kiss.” And she displays dismay and vulnerability on “Convince Me,” and the heart-wrenching “Copenhagen” about the death of someone close.

From “Copenhagen:”

“Thundering news hits me like a snowball
Struck in my face and shattering
Covering me in a fine powder and mist
And mixing in with my tears

I’m 57 but I could be 7 years old
Cuz I will never be able
To comprehend the expansiveness
Of what I’ve just learned

You have disappeared
You have been released
You are flecks of light
You are missed

Somewhere spinning ‘round the sun
Circling the moon
Traveling through time
You are missed.”

Elvis Costello says this about “Kiss Like Your Kiss,” “…this song is going to make you wish you were loved or in love with someone enough so you could sing it to them.”

From “Kiss Like Your Kiss:”

“There will never be a spring so perfect again
We’ll never see a yellow so rich
The grass will never be quite as green
And there will never be a kiss like your kiss.”

Lucinda Williams inspires the creativity in me and a desire to be authentic in my own work. Who would have thought that another artist could serve as a muse? Lucinda Williams is the real deal, and Blessed is an album I am grateful to own.