Rootsy songstress Lucinda Williams is back from a three-year silence, and she brings with her the double album Where the Spirit Meets the Bone, which can be heard over at NPR now prior to its Sept. 30 release.
Williams' first single from the album, the bluesy "Burning Bridges," is the primary muscle of the album, leading way to softer, country-tinged numbers like "Wrong Number" and "Compassion." "As she's done so eloquently in the past, Williams captures regret in its many forms and guises: Sometimes she uses beautifully airborne poetic language to convey its corrosion (see "Temporary Nature of Any Precious Thing"), and sometimes, as in "Cold Day in Hell," she transforms a cliche into a vessel for the expression of a hurt that sounds profound and disquietingly fresh," NPR observed about the collection of songs.
The singer-songwriter has been around for awhile - her first release, Ramblin' On My Mind, came out in 1979. "Part of me is a perpetual adolescent," she told The Telegraph last year about getting older. "I just don't like the responsibility of being a homeowner. There's so much to worry with - you know, like the air-conditioning broke, or we need a new coffee table. I always thought it would be really cool to live in a hotel - you have room service and maid service, and I don't like to have to worry with mundane things. I never make a plan."
"But there was a famous actress who said, 'I can say whatever I want now I'm old. I've earned the right,'" she continued. "And that's the thing about getting older. If you embrace it, it's kind of like you've earned it."
Check out "Burning Bridges" below and head over to NPR to hear the rest of Williams' album.
