Lucinda Williams

Good Souls Better Angels

HIGHWAY20/THIRTY TIGERS

Revered American songwriter in visceral, impassioned form.

Lucinda Williams’s fourteenth studio album chimes with the times like no other. It documents a world in crisis from a number of standpoints, be it the selfexplanatory Bad News Blues (peopled by ‘fools, thieves, clowns and hypocrites’), the social media toxicity of Shadows & Doubts, or the seething Man Without A Soul which rips the rug from under political chestbeaters everywhere, not just in the White House.

Backed by her trusty Buick 6, Williams’s anger is reflected in the music, which tempers her primal electric blues and country with garagey punk and heaving rock. Yet there’s also empathy, hope and an unyielding sense of humanity at work here; Big Black Train and When The Way Gets Dark both address the spectre of mental illness, while the experimental, hip-hopish Wakin’ Up charts her real-life deliverance from an abusive relationship. ■■■■■■■■■■