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Product Description
Amazon.co.uk Review
Most artists who appeal to adult listeners tend to settle into a comfortable niche, but Lucinda Williams refuses to play it safe on World Without Tears. Instead her music stings like an open wound as she continues to strip away the protective layers from her art's emotional core. Though Williams has long been prized for the naked honesty of her music, this album is even more raw than its predecessors. From the down-and-dirty bar-band blues of "Atonement" to the Rolling Stones styled swagger of "Bleeding Fingers" to the tricky balance of debasement and transcendence in "Ventura", Williams leaves the nerve endings of her music exposed.
With the band opting for first-take immediacy rather than polish, some of the most powerful material is also the neediest, as the singer addresses lovers who have disrespected her ("Righteously") or abandoned her ("Those Three Days", "Minneapolis"). Although her attempts at rap on "Sweet Side" and "American Dream" might cause diehard fans to wince, her willingness to take creative chances reaffirms her position at the vanguard of a rootsy progressivism that transcends musical category. Simply put, there's more Patti Smith in her than there is Patsy Cline. --Don McLeese
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Lucinda's 'World' achingly beautiful,
This review is from: World Without Tears (Audio CD)
Lucinda Williams is a woman of constant sorrow. At least, it seems that way on her misleadingly titled seventh album World Without Tears. Laced with heartache and sorrow, steeped in loneliness and disillusionment, these 13 achingly beautiful songs capture the notoriously uncompromising singer-songwriter adrift in a stark, candlelit landscape of woozy country waltzes and raw-bones, deliberately paced roots-rockers. Opening cut Fruits of my Labour sets the tone with its languid tempo and vibrato-soaked guitar swirls, which are echoed in longing ballads like Ventura, the old-timey Over Time, the torchy Worlds Fell and the chilly Minneapolis. The hour-long set is by no means a one-dimensional affair, though. First single Righteously is a sexy, funky little pout powered by searing, Coltrane-inspired guitar solos and one of Lucinda's steamier vocals -- she just turned 50 this year, but the way her bittersweet pipes purr lines like, "When you run your hand all up and run it back down my leg / Get me all worked up like that" will practically melt the wax in you ears. It righteously breaks the hypnotic spell cast by those ballads, while the gnarled blooz-stomp of Atonement, the ragged Stonesy jive of Bleeding Fingers and the plain-spoken folktronic monologue of American Dream also go a long way from keeping Lucinda from getting stuck in a Cowboy Junkies-style rut. Stylistic variety aside, though, it's the refrain of American Dream -- "Everything is wrong" -- that more succinctly reflects Lucinda's perspective on World Without Tears. Or as she puts it on the title cut: "If we lived in a world without tears / How would bruises find a face to lie upon? / How would scars find skin to etch themselves into?" And how, we could ask, would Lucinda Williams find anything to write songs about? If we're lucky, we'll never know.
9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
'America's greatest living songwriter' does it again,
This review is from: World Without Tears (Audio CD)
Country music is difficult for me. Too many hats, too much misogyny disguised as down-home family values. And my Dad loved it. There are exceptions, those outstanding songwriters who hover in the aisles of that musical church, writing songs that reflect your life in its mirror and breaks it into tiny glorious pieces. Hank Williams Sr, Gram Parsons at his best and sometimes EmmyLou Harris, Steve Earle, occasionally Ryan Adams, and Lucinda Williams. These songs sound so urgent, so heartfelt, so racked with need that it takes a while to appreciate how perfectly formed, well played and well produced they are. These are songs for adults, who've been around the block a few times, aren't without scars, and are fiercely passionate despite all that. You'll dance, you'll cry, you'll recommend it to people you care about.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Where has the imagination gone?,
By
This review is from: World Without Tears (Audio CD)
Lucinda Williams' song Side Of The Road is one of the most extraordinary, beautiful and haunting songs I've ever heard, and some of the tracks on her last CD came very close to that quality in their ability to take you into the heart of somebody else's world with feeling. But for my money there's nothing to touch her best work on World Without Tears. To me the song writing all sounds a bit labored and tired, the delivery and voice uncertain as to what she's aiming for and the quasi-rap just plain wrong for both her voice and the material. I don't care what the other reviewers say, I would advise you give this a miss.
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