These days, the world bears its weight on you before you even get the chance to look around. Doom is not simply coupled with scrolling; it pre-registers. In this climate, Lucinda Williams feels no need to be subtle or overly specific, only to affirm that she’s no lone ranger. “We are here to bear witness/ To this monstrous sickness,” she sings on the closing track of her latest album, World’s Gone Wrong, the monsters needing no introduction. Whether slow-burning or downright funky, the album recognizes the pervasive nature of its own weariness and uses every style at its disposal to fight apathy – not to push the world beyond this point of no return, but to keep going in spite.
1. World’s Gone Wrong [feat. Brittney Spencer]
The opening title track strikes the perfect balance, relaying the struggles of a working-class couple over shiny guitars, a warm Hammond B-3, and a soaring hook. Williams’ perspective is hardly absent; her verses are conversational, but as she zooms out in the chorus, her attempt to offer universal solace feels personal. The song’s most touching moment comes when she finaly homes in on a tender scene of the wearied couple putting on Miles Davis and dancing. Anybody listening should know that alone can do a world of good.
2. Something’s Gotta Give [feat. Brittney Spencer]
Williams keeps the crunch of the opening track but spins darker, moodier chords, illustrating “the heaviness to these days.” Unlike the systems it skewers, at no point does the song seem at risk of falling apart, but there’s a fire in its robust arrangement, reinforced by country singer’s Brittney Spencer’s backing vocals.
3. Low Life
Several times I listened to this song, pinning it as the album’s secret standout, before realizing it was co-written by Big Thief’s Adrianne Lenker and Buck Meek – they’re both credited, but mentioned nowhere in the press materials. It finds them relaxing into a soulful, gospel-inflected tune – elevated by Mickey Raphael’s breathtaking harmonica – about finding refuge in a dive bar with no television or familiar faces in sight. It hits even if you’re sober.
4. How Much Did You Get for Your Soul
‘How Much Did You Get for Your Soul’ picks the groove back up but comes off more redundant than redemptive. William’s biting delivery salvages some of the clunkier lyrics, which get the point across quickly but become tiresome after four minutes, and the instrumentation could use a bit more muscle. Still, it’s well-placed and too enjoyable to pass up.
5. So Much Trouble in the World [feat. Mavis Staples]
The band adds touches of reggae as they deliver a cover of Bob Marley’s perfectly pertinent ‘So Much Trouble in the World’. But it’s not the apt choice that resonates so much as the song’s appearance as a duet with Mavis Staples, converging the legendary singers’ perspectives. It should at least point you in the direction of Staples’ excellent covers LP from last year, which, taking its name from Mark Linkous’ ‘Sad and Beautiful World’, feels spiritually aligned with Williams’ latest.
6. Sing Unburied Sing
Inspired by Jesmyn Ward’s novel of the same name, ‘Sing Unburied Sing’ kicks the album’s second side into gear with a mix of urgency and mystery. On backup, Maureen Murphy and Siobhan Kennedy knock it out of the park.
7. Blue Tears
“The dream is deferred/ And the churches are burning” might be the best lines Williams delivers on World’s Gone Wrong, fittingly snuck into this swampy blues jam. The references are clear but Williams’ vocals lend them scorching weight, even if this is another song that would’ve benefitted from being a duet.
8. Punchline
Though almost exactly the same length as the previous track, ‘Punchline’ doesn’t justify it in the same way, an ominous lament that coasts on a few too many platitudes. But Williams conveys her despirited mood with more nerve than most, singing, “The world’s turning faster/ Spinning out of control/ And the two-face masters/ Tricking the lost souls/ They know how to choose you.” God may have forgotten the punchline, but the ones with blood in their hands are those whose own runs cold.
9. Freedom Speaks
“They will kill to keep me down/ They don’t want me to speak,” Williams sings with hard-won conviction, “So let me remind you/ Just what’s at stake.” (It’s there in the title.) After the beaten-down ‘Punchline’, ‘Freedom Speaks’ is the vibrant polemic the album sorely needed before its conclusion, holding on to the hope someone out there is still listening.
10. We’ve Come Too Far to Turn Around
Featuring Norah Jones, the album’s second duet is its second best song: Williams’ weariness is at its most poetic and lived-in, the production as liquid as the lies she says we’ve been sold, and Jones’ contributions make it sound slightly less disheartening. It’s a final reminder that the 73-year-old is here to bear witness and withstand, not necessarily chart the path to resistance, but providing the necessary fuel to survive.
