Lucinda Williams is someone it’s fashionable to like, and although it’s early in the year yet, I’ve heard enough about West from any number of sources to be fairly confident that it’s going to show up on quite a few year-end lists. And I’ll be straight up with you — if it does, it’s going to be solely on reputation, voted in there by people who still go to sleep with their copies of Car Wheels on a Gravel Road playing. There’s certainly nothing in the actual album to justify that measure of adulation, or really, any adulation at all.

Shockingly, given Williams’ legendary obsessiveness with the production of her albums, this is a CD with no sonic signature at all; remove the vocals, and it could be Patty Griffin, or Carter Wood, or any number of other singers mining the same sort of laid-back, dreamy Americana. It’s got all of the requirements: reverb-heavy guitars that don’t actually do much, plenty of background organ chords, and drum parts that probably only require one hand to play. Every once in a while, a bit of distortion comes in, or the sound is interrupted by a passing violin. But it all sounds like Lucinda-by-numbers, a frankly uninteresting rehash of things that not only she but plenty of other people have already done better.

Plus, Williams’ voice, never perhaps her strongest asset, sounds particularly damaged and unsteady on this album. She gropes for the pitches in a manner that makes Bob Dylan look like Luciano Pavarotti. Maybe it’s simply a taste I haven’t acquired, but I found the vocals uncomfortably grating, and I was distracted every time she started singing again after a break.

Finally, Williams’ greatest talent is supposed to be as a songwriter, but the songwriting on this album is pedestrian at best, pure hackwork at worst. The opening cut, “Are You Alright?” seems to be an attempt to set the record for most times the title of a song can be used in the lyrics. This is followed by “Mama You Sweet,” which begins with the phrase “I love you Mama, you sweet,” repeated four times — I half expected it to keep going for the rest of the song. By the time it got to “Unsuffer Me,” which, I kid you not, starts out with Lucinda unironically declaring, “Unlock my love and set me free, come fill my soul with ecstasy,” I was almost in disbelief. Even a third-rate eurotrance act busy writing their lyrics using a Flemish-English rhyming dictionary would have rejected that particular cliche.

There’s only one song on the album that doesn’t sound like the above-described, and if anything, it’s far, far worse. “Wrap My Head Around That,” all 9+ minutes of it, is Lucinda rapping over a sort of A Tribe Called Quest-rejected bass and organ line. I’m not actually sure I’ve ever heard worse rapping, with fewer interesting rhymes and less of a sense of the all-important “flow.” Nothing comes to mind. Compared to Lucinda, Vanilla Ice’s mike-rocking skills are positively breathtaking. “I know I’m missing something, or something’s missing here and there / and all over and over, around, and up and everywhere,” she declaims, as though it were actually supposed to mean something. Astounding.

I really can’t think of a reason to recommend this album to anyone without a fanatical interest either in Williams or in Americana in general. The only reason that I’m glad I suffered through it is so that I can have a good reason to clench both my fists and my teeth when I have to read about how wonderful it is again come December.

Release date: Feb. 13, 2007
Label: Lost Highway
Rating: 3/10

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