Product Details
ASIN : B000LXHGFI
Track Listings for
Disc-1
1. Are You Alright?
2. Mama You Sweet
3. Learning How to Live
4. Fancy Funeral
5. Unsuffer Me
6. Everything Has Changed
7. Come On
8. Where Is My Love?
9. Rescue
10. What If
11. Wrap My Head Around That
12. Words
13. West
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Editorial Reviews
From Amazon.com
Though the arrangements stray from Lucinda Williams's motherlode blend of blues, country, and folk, West may well be her best album. It is easily her most musically adventurous, and often her most lyrically inspired. Williams's singing has never sounded better, from the aching tenderness of "Where Is My Love?" to the ravaged catharsis of "Unsuffer Me." New York producer Hal Willner, who has worked with artists such as Marianne Faithful and Lou Reed, enlists the support of eclectic progressives like guitarist Bill Frisell, keyboardist Bob Burger, and violinist Jenny Scheinman, along with harmonies from the Jayhawks' Gary Louris, to weave a subtly rich sonic tapestry. Much of the material was inspired by the death of Williams's beloved mother ("Mama You Sweet," "Fancy Funeral") and the bitter breakup of a relationship (the jagged-edged emasculation of "Come On," the repetitive incantation of "Wrap My Head Around That"), though "Are You Alright?," "Learning How to Live," and "Everything Has Changed" could reflect the aftermath of both. Other highlights include "Rescue," with a languid subtlety and ambient pulse reminiscent of Beth Orton, and the dreamy, wistful title track. Where Williams's music has long cut close to the bone, the best of West slices right through it. --Don McLeese
Customer Reviews
Very open and honest with her emotions. (2007-03-20)  Like her pervious albums, Lucinda Williams is very open and honest about her life, and isn't afraid to express her most personal feelings in her songs. This album is probably her most confessional yet. The album deals heavily with love. But despite being released during Valentine's Day week, it is a very dark album. It deals with topics such as having anger at a lover, grief, and love that is lost. But it's not all bleak, as the album does also have tracks that deal with embracing the chance to change things. Williams is once again very open and honest with her emotions, and her frankness is in stark contrast to most of the cookie cutter music that gets released. The music is also very good, and fits her vocals and tone perfectly. Some of the highlights include "Come On", "Learning how to Live", and "Wrap My Head Around That". For anyone that likes to hear real emotion in their music, they certainly can't go wrong with this album. The lyrics, combined with the music, make for an album that, while sad and dark at times, also shows that there are always rays of hope no matter how bleak things may seem. Like flowers blooming through cracked city concrete, Lucinda Williams's music is a paradox: how can her songs, almost exclusively about death, loneliness and failure, be so beautiful and uplifting? Nine albums in, Lucinda Williams has reached something approaching perfection. Her voice traverses country smoothness to Marlboro-ravaged drawl with elegant ease while Bill Frissell's guitar twangs and howls and shimmers with otherworldly wonder. As befits the intimate nature of the lyrics, the arrangements get sparser as the album progresses - the barnstorming Are You Alright? is an exception - making this her least rock 'n' roll album for years. "West" cements Williams as one of the finest vocalists and songwriters, but it is easier to imagine this atmospheric slow-burner losing older fans than winning new ones. This is definitely a very well done album. And I highly recommend it to all the truly great music lovers.
Intense. (2007-02-21)  "West" is Lucinda's eighth studio album and simply quite brilliant. Nobody does that low-down dirty country blues like Lucinda, locking into a languid, aching groove and sending shivers down the spine of any living thing within range of that earthy vibrato.Not that she is interested in staying within some country comfort zone, "Wrap My Head Around That" straying into uncharted territory.It is not the first time she has slowed a lyric to spoken level, but this is a rhythmic bona fide country rap epic, a compelling narrative over nine minutes long, punctuated by snarling guitar chops and solos. "Words" is another wise old tale written on that cracked parchment of a voice, wafting over an intoxicating melody. She quotes her father, literature and poetry professor Miller Williams on West's sleeve notes: "You do not know what wars are going on down there where the spirit meets the bone", and these songs are a product of an internal turmoil caused by her mother's death and an intense relationship that spectacularly crashed and burned. Put brutally selfishly, Lucinda's loss is our gain, gut-wrenching songs like "Unsuffer Me" burn with the agony and ecstasy of "Essence", and "Fancy Funeral" has the rare power to reduce grown men and women to tears.She has assembled a great band including Bill Frisell, Jim Keltner and her long-time guitarist, the superb Doug Petibone, who do ample justice to this scintillating set of songs.I like it. You will be moved, to say the least.
Walking in the shadowlands.... (2007-02-13) Loss and loneliness are at the core of Lucinda Williams' eighth album, "West". The album's 13 songs together form a largely down-tempo disc, but "West" doesn't only find Williams in a somber mood. "Mama You Sweet" is upbeat and "Come On" is a nasty, almost raunchy kiss-off, musically akin to "Atonement" from her last album, 2003's "World Without Tears". She injects doses of hope and light in tracks like "What If", in which she imagines a world where the president wears pink and a prostitute is a queen. "I get tired of people looking at my songs and feeling that they're all sad and dark. There's more to them than that. Some people might read Flannery O'Connor and see that as simply dark - and it is dark and disturbing - but there's a philosophical aspect, even a comical aspect to it as well. I think that's all there on this album. It's a full circle, like I've come through a metamorphosis", she says... "West" is Williams's finest hour. There are uncomfortable truths here, carried on easy-going melodies. "Fancy Funeral" is a wry look at death's priorities that flows as easily as drink. Williams lost her mother and an errant lover as these songs were being written. These two truncated relationships fill "West" with exquisitely turned suffering; Williams and band provides the expert musical succour. Hal Wilner is the producer who organised this record's quietly unconventional sounds as Williams wanted them. Equally raw and sensual is the unravelling blues of "Unsuffer Me", where Williams's ravaged voice begs: "Undo my logic/ Undo my fear" with an intensity that verges on the erotic. Subtle and heroically blunt by turns, "West" is a meditation on abandonment and recovery, abandon and regret that deserves to be hauled out of the Americana ghetto and celebrated everywhere wounded hearts beat. She is nothing if not a purely confessional songwriter who continually walks in the shadowlands to bring out what is both most personal yet universal in her work, to communicate to listeners directly and without compromise. The album is impeccable and is destined to be a classic.
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