LUCINDA WILLIAMS – BLESSED
Lucinda Williams has a great country-rock voice. Blessed is a great country-rock album – a testament to doing what you do, and doing it very well. Rockin’ out from the opening track with her kiss-off to a former boyfriend, Buttercup, Williams is in fine voice both vocally and lyrically here on album number ten. After that four-on-the-floor opening Williams pulls things back to the country side for a few tracks, including the Chris Iassac-esque Coppenhagen, before Seeing Black lets the band back off the leash. But all this is just a lead in for the title track. “We were blessed by the teacher who didn’t have a degree / We were blessed by the prisoner who knew how to be free…We were blessed by the forlorn, forsaken and abused”. A simple litany of the oft forgotten things and people, and a song that will be an instant Williams classic. With occasional help from good friends Elvis Costello and Matthew Sweet and great guitar work form Val McCullum and Greg Leisz Blessed lives up to its title. If there is a slip, it comes in the jazzy torch song Born To Be Loved, not that its a bad song, just that it’s not Williams forte, and i just keep wondering how good it would sound at the hands of Renee Geyer!
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