release date: Jun. 30, 1998
format: cd
[album rate: 4 / 5] [3,77]
producer: Roy Bittan, Steve Earle, Ray Kennedy, Lucinda Williams
label: Mercury Records - nationality: USA
Track highlights: 1. "Right in Time" - 2. "Car Wheels on a Gravel Road" - 3. "2 Kool 2 Be 4-Gotten" (4 / 5) - 4. "Drunken Angel" - 5. "Concrete and Barbed Wire" - 8. "I Lost It"
5th studio album by American country rocker Lucinda Williams follows six full years after her most recent studio album Sweet Old World, which in '92 was regarded as a breakthrough album and which eventually took her from smaller independent label of Chameleon Records to Mercury and also to widespread critical acclaim.
Now, although country isn't really my style, I find this more than quite good. And then it's not really classic country, nor is it a Johnny-Cash-kind-of-country but more of an updated and electrified version centered around country music with added blues, folk rock, singer / songwriter, roots rock, and with hints of americana, which ultimately makes it a more than just interesting cocktail. The themes are typical to the root genre but the lyrics appear mature, contemporary, and personal. And then, Lucinda has a really original singing style building on rusty tones with blue notes.
Admittedly, this was my first encounter with the music by Williams but it opened up the door to her discography, and it feels like a small revelation to someone who hasn't had the most positive view on country. Needless say, the genre is so wide and open for variations that you cannot exclude it on an excuse of prejudice, and since I'm already familiar with other artists who have excelled on the outskirts of the genre, this album has made me more curious to the whole genre as such.
Car Wheels on Gravel Road was met by universal acclaim, and it was nominated a number of prizes as well as been enlisted in various best of lists including "The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time" by Rolling Stone, and it's enlisted in "1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die".
Highly recommended.
[ allmusic.com, Rolling Stone 5 / 5, Q Magazine 4 / 5 stars ]
