World
Without Tears: Lucinda Williams rocks, raps, rules;
Canadian Kathleen Edwards' Failer is anything but
a failure
By María Eugenia
Guerra
Sometimes when I venture
to write a review about something about which I know
nothing, like music, I'm tempted to say it like I
heard it on American Bandstand so long ago: the beat
was great, but I liked the words.
It could be that one of the most interesting things
you could note about the career of alternative country
rocker Lucinda Williams is that at 50 -- the age at
which some performers may be winding down a career
or enjoying a brief comeback -- she has hit her stride.
But better to say, what a beautiful, strange, and
dangerously haunting voice this woman has, a voice
that evokes dead-on-the-money longing, weariness,
hurt, joy, and the backdraft of love spent wrong and
now gone.
Clearly on a roll since 1998's Car Wheels on a Gravel
Road and 2001's Essence, Williams' April release of
World Without Tears pulls you into stories told in
powerfully crafted, emotionally laden lyrics.
Carefully chosen words used sparsely speak volumes
for that about which she sings. Vanity Fair called
Williams World Without Tears a "record of a lifetime
-- a profoundly chilling, heartbreaking, important
record."
The Grammy-winning Williams -- Female Rock Vocal for
Essence's "Get Right with God," Contemporary
Folk Album for Car Wheels on a Gravel Road, and the
writing of "Passionate Kisses" -- wrote
most of the songs for World Without Tears while touring
for Essence.
It's difficult to pick a favorite cut and for what
reason. Pretty and poignant are "Words Fell,"
a song about reincarnation, and "OverTime,"
about the persistence of memory.
Your blue eyes, your
black eyelashes
The way you looked at life
In your funny way
I guess out of the blue
You won't cross my mind
And I'll get over you
Overtime
The cut called "Sweet Side" is anything
but sweet. This courageous and heartbreaking song
leaves no doubt that the subject matter is child abuse
and that the wounds run deep. The tender hand that
Williams runs over the proud flesh of those betrayals
apprises us that though scabbed over, the wounds simply
never heal and color every relationship thereafter.
It is one thing to read about abuse; it is quite another
to hear so bare and driven a story, and in rap.
You've had the blues
since you were six
Your little blue tennis shoes and your pick-up sticks
You were screamed
at and kicked over and over
Now you always feel sick
And you can't keep a lover
Every Christmas there
were presents to unwrap
But the things you witnessed
When you were five and a half
So you don't always show your sweet side
Recorded live at an
old estate in Silver Lake, CA, rather than in a studio,
World Without Tears plays like the masterful original
that it is.
Canadian Kathleen
Edwards' debut album, Failer (Zoë, Rounder Records)
is anything but a failure. Despite a few bitter songs,
the album has guts and packs a punch and looks at
the sad way some badly wired relationships implode,
not unlike Lucinda Williams, to whom Edwards has been
compared. It's a fair comparison, too, even as to
the smoky twang and shared barfly perspectives about
the unseemly side of love.
Despite her brazen and sometimes minimalist approaches
to tough subjects like frying the last love of her
life, Edwards makes pretty music, some of it delicate.
It's fresh stuff, written by someone with a good eye
for the subtle, sometimes inexplicable, intricacies
of human nature.
