Category: Music

Marriage has apparently mellowed her but you wouldn’t know it from the tone of the songs on Lucinda William’s latest. They still excoriate, castigate and scorn as blithely as ever – and in as poetic a vein. Daughter of a nationally renowned poet who read his work at Bill Clintons second inauguration, Williams’ apparently effortless songwriting template has again produced a collection of  enduring classics delivered in her sublimely harrowed voice. Production is exquisite, Don Was steering a well-oiled machine with Elvis Costello donating gentlemanly, if sometimes suitably reckless guitar work.  On first lesson the album handles like its predecessors, never straying too far from the ‘Car Wheels’ handbook, but inevitable repeats leads to an understanding that you are listening to a ineffable mastery of modern songwriting.