Stories From A Rock N Roll Heart----Lucinda Williams

Comeback album from the great singer/songwriter

Back in June, Michael Fremer and I discussed my next Tracking Angle piece, and we agreed that I should do something I hadn’t done in a while and review a new album. I did some research and decided that Lucinda Williams’ Stories From A Rock n Roll Heart would be a good choice. Michael agreed, and so it was decided.

I hadn’t heard the album, but I’d admired Williams’ music dating back to the time before her 1998 breakthrough Car Wheels on a Gravel Road.  Her unsentimental, plain-spoken lyrics about the despairs, joys, and craziness of working-class life in the South were short stories set to a mixture of the Stones, southern rock, country, blues and soul. “I could tell a lie but my heart would know,” she sang in  “Car Wheels,” and like all great artists, she told the truths you knew or should know, in her own way, a way you never heard before, and, man oh man, could the woman sing.

I was sure I’d like Stories From A Rock n Roll Heart. I didn’t expect it would be Car Wheels, or World Without Tears, or Essence. She’s seventy years old, has been recording since 1979, and has made more than twenty albums. That’s a lot of trips to the well and back. Sometimes even the greats get tired. Sometimes the well dries up. In 2020, she suffered a stroke and has yet to fully recover. It is testament to her determination, toughness and dedication that she has resumed touring and made this new album. One can only marvel and wish for her full recovery.

Like Good Souls Better Angels, her last non-covers album, Stories was produced by Williams, her husband, Tom Overby, and Ray Kennedy and recorded at Room & Board studio in Nashville. Stuart Mathis is back on guitar and like Good Souls, accompaniment is limited to a guitars, bass, and drums, with occasional keyboards rock band. I wasn’t overly fond of the punk/grunge influenced musical style of Good Souls and thought that the songwriting was lacking in subtlety and far below Williams’ best. Still, her singing made for an enjoyable album. I expected Stories to be more of the same.

But then the LP arrived and hmmmm… all of the songs are co-written by Tom Overby, and all but two have additional credits to Travis Stephens and/or Jesse Malin. More than two writers credited on a song is usually a bad sign. An even worse sign is one of the most acclaimed living song writers collaborating extensively. And then, the more I thought about it, the more the title---“Stories From A Rock n Roll Heart” sounded like the announcement of an album of embarrassing boomer, “I’m old but I’m still cool” bragging. Lou Reed and Eric Clapton both did “rock n roll heart” songs decades ago. Lou was smart enough to be funny. Clapton’s ended up in a commercial to sell phones. “Yeah, I’m still hip and cool, so I’ll buy one of those new-fangled phones.”  

With some trepidation, I played the album and forced myself to listen to the end because it was my job. It is worse than mediocre and, if not for the saving grace of her voice, just plain bad. I didn’t want to write about it. I thought about bailing, telling Michael Fremer, “I don’t have the heart for this and It will give me no satisfaction to write this review." I thought about being easy with the truth—gloss over my thoughts on the album---trot out the standard tropes—"heartfelt vocals,” “poetic lyrics,” “evocative melodies” and “rock n roll passion” while expressing admiration for her courageous comeback. I read reviews in magazines and websites that were nearly uniformly laudatory. I thought that maybe I was wrong. I listened to the album five or six more times and liked it less every time.

Our job here at Tracking Angle is to tell the truth as we see it. I’m going to do my job.

“Let’s Get The Band Back Together,” the first song on Stories is sadly typical of the album. Over a rudimentary barroom jam session blues progression, Williams sings a minimalistic, seemingly off the cuff, melody, while the band play what is supposed to be rock ‘n roll with the now and for a long time fashionable, pounding grunge trudge. The music is loud, aggressive and boring. The lyrics are banal and sentimental, displaying none of the insight, originality or intelligence that made her reputation. It’s a bad song full of fake emotion and fake excitement, but I’s not the worst on the album.  

I’ll try to get positive. “Hum’s Liquor,” written about Bob Stinson of the Replacements, is far and away the best song on the album. It’s the only one that displays the talents that made Williams a great songwriter---her storytelling ability, her empathy and understanding of the lost and troubled and, with “a lonely waltz of pain,” her the knack for the perfect phrase. Now, stop reading for a few minutes and listen to “Hum’s Liquor” and then “Drunken Angel” from Car Wheels, a much greater song on the same theme. Review’s over. I’m done.               

I wish I could get away with that. But my duty is to tell you that there are eight more songs and they are all very similar. The lyrics are a constant stream of clichés, alternating between sentimentality and rock ‘n roll bravado. “Rock ‘n Roll Heart” is a Springsteen rip that is just silly. I can’t believe Lucinda Williams wrote these lines, “You don’t have to be that smart. You don’t have to be a work of art. That’s when you know you’ve got a rock ‘n roll heart.”  “Jukebox” is outright corny. “Stolen Moments,” written for Tom Petty is maudlin with lines about rainbows and prayers. All the music is extremely simplistic, unmemorable, and lacks any joyful rock ‘n toll energy. Sadly, the clever melodies, unusual chords, and creative use of American roots music that made Williams a star when Car Wheels was released are missing. Williams’ voice is showing a lot of wear, her range is decreasing, and she’s losing some control of her vibrato, but her singing is soulful and the best part of what is otherwise a bad album.

In a recent interview, Williams stated that she wanted to write rock songs like Tom Petty, and obviously, this album is very heavily influenced by him and Bruce Springsteen (who sings back up on two songs.) I don’t know why Lucinda Williams, who has written so many classic songs that no one else could have, would want to write songs like Tom Petty or anyone else. Maybe Williams’ misplaced ambition is the problem, or maybe the problem is the co-writers, but the songs on Stories From A Rock n Roll Heart are not distinctive and seem impersonal, full of posturing and bluster but no real emotion. Williams, in her nineties to early 2000s prime, wrote and sang songs that were stories that you knew had to be true. They were Lucinda Williams songs. The songs on Stories From A Rock ‘n Roll Heart aren’t Lucinda Williams songs.

My LP played quietly without significant noise. I couldn’t find any information on where the LPs were pressed.

The recording, like almost all other contemporary rock recordings I have heard, sounds so severely compressed that it lacks any significant dynamic range. It is near mono; there is no soundstage or sense of instruments playing in a room. With a thin, hazy midrange, an accentuated piercing treble and a tuneless thumping bass, the music sounds very digital, even on LP. This is not subtle, nuanced music, so maybe the harsh, cranked sound is appropriate. I found it unpleasant.