Is Lucinda Williams a storyteller or a story-writer? No one can deny the intimate power of her great songs, heartbreaking stories that swim in the texture of experience (“We used to drive/Through Lafayette and Baton Rouge/In a Yellow El Camino/Listening to Howlin’ Wolf”) before surfacing with a bracing, universalizing chill (“Did you run about as far as you could go?”). But when Williams took the stage at Turner Hall on Wednesday, opening with “Lake Charles,” she sang with the distraction of someone sending a text message. Her voice is as evocative as ever, but there was no Grand ‘Ol Opry-style “sell.” Just a nervous sway–back and forth, back and forth.
Williams typically tours and plays with a crack band, which offers a sweetly sad backdrop to her songs. And her meticulous production standards were once legendary—she worked on her masterpiece, Car Wheels on a Gravel Road, for years. But playing solo, she seemed a bit stage struck, unable to give her stories their full emotional weight.
Her set sampled from both the old and new, spending a good amount of time in the Car Wheels era, but also showcasing new songs from Blessed, which has just been released. In recent years, Williams has stopped singing “stories” and developed a knack for “catalogs.” The title track from Blessed, a celebration of her recent marriage, is a beautiful collection of images. But other songs sound like a checklist handed out by a marriage counselor.
By the time the encores rolled around, Williams seemed a bit more at ease. She turned loose on a version of Skip James “Killing Floor Blues” and dedicated the angry young woman scorcher, “Joy,” to the political struggles in Madison. Happiness is just fine, but anger seems to bring out her best.
