“I’m by no means gonna fade away,” the Americana legend sings on her fifteenth album
Within the spring of 2021, Lucinda Williams chatted with Rolling Stone about her restoration from a stroke she’d had the earlier November that had led to her being unable to play guitar. “The principle factor is I can nonetheless sing. I’m singing my ass off, in order that hasn’t been affected,” she advised RS. “Can’t maintain me down for too lengthy.” That spirit animates the Americana legend’s fifteenth album, Tales From a Rock N Roll Coronary heart, a 10-song assortment the place Williams celebrates the ability of survival by performing with and honoring the chums she’s made by means of her prolonged profession.
Williams co-wrote all of Tales’ 10 tracks along with her husband and longtime collaborator Tom Overby; Nashville session guitarist Travis Stephens and downtown New York rock fixture Jesse Malin additionally assisted. “Let’s Get the Band Again Collectively” units the tone, its hard-won reflection (“We have been simply one other bunch of silly youngsters/Staying up all night time enjoying poker and pool”) melding with the kind of defiant jubilance that powers nice rock & roll songs. It’s an “I’m nonetheless right here” declaration that’s backed up by the music that follows.
Williams’ “Rock N Roll Coronary heart” is a Hammond B3-laced salute to rock’s energy to encourage individuals like “a blue-collar boy in a no-win city” — a subject that sounds tailored for a track by Bruce Springsteen, who alongside along with his spouse Patti Scialfa offers backing vocals that underline the brand new minimize’s echoes of his personal 1980 monitor “Hungry Coronary heart.” Nation spitfire Margo Worth’s yelps add a punk-rock edge to “This Is Not My City,” a swampy survey of a ruined panorama that was “the place that made me” however has now been overrun by clowns. And folk-rocker Angel Olsen’s counterpoint harmonies on the tender ode to a neighborhood dive “Jukebox” drives residence the ways in which acquainted locations and songs can present solace, with Olsen answering Williams’ prayer of being absolved from loneliness in stirring style.
The Louisiana-born troubadour additionally pays homage to 2 mates and colleagues she’s misplaced. “Stolen Moments,” which was written in reminiscence of Tom Petty, is a slow-burner that displays on how grief can hit one at sudden occasions — driving on Sundown, staring out an airplane window. It blooms into the kind of rave-up that Petty and his Heartbreakers specialised in, capped by a scorching electrical guitar solo that fades away simply earlier than the track does. “Hum’s Liquor” is a heartbreaking portrait of alcoholism written as a tribute to late Replacements guitarist Bob Stinson; that his brother and fellow Substitute Tommy offers backing vocals makes it much more of a gut-punch. Williams has survived a lot over the course of her life, however she hasn’t let it break her — as she declares on this report’s closing monitor, “I’m by no means gonna fade away.” Tales From a Rock N Roll Coronary heart is an instance of power and conviction — in addition to friendship.
