Lucinda Williams - West
Product Information
Track List: West
Click on or song title to hear an audio clip. Windows Media player is required.
- Are You Alright?
- Mama You Sweet
- Learning How To Live
- Fancy Funeral
- Unsuffer Me
- Everything Has Changed
- Come On
- Where Is My Love?
- Rescue
- What If
- Wrap My Head Around That
- Words
- West
More Lucinda Williams CDs and Albums
Album Details: West
- Release Date:
- 02/13/2007
- Label:
- Lost Highway
- UPC:
- 602498583487
User Reviews: West
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West is wrong direction for Lucinda
, April 3, 2007Reviewer: music55_2000 - See all music55_2000's reviews
read all (1) user reviews for West
Pro Reviews: West
| EXPERT RATING: From AMG Reviews The title of West reflects the change in Lucinda Williams' life as she moved to Los Angeles. It also reflects what had been left behind. Williams is nothing if not a purely confessional songwriter. She 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. If Essence and World Without Tears took chances and stated different sides of the songwriter and her world, West jumps off the ledge into the sky of freedom, where anything can be said without worry of consequence and where anything can be said in any way she wishes. It's entirely appropriate that West was released on the day before Valentine's Day 2007, for it's a record about the heart, about its volumes of brokenness, about its acceptance of its state, and how, with the scars still visible to the bearer, it opens wider and becomes the font of love itself. But the journey is a dark one. First there's the music and the production. Williams chose Hal Willner to produce West. Williams, who'd been writing a lot, demoed some songs before she brought in Willner. He stripped down the demos but kept the scratch vocals. From there, the pair created the rest of the album together, never rerecording Williams' initial vocals. The vocals were accompanied by her guitar playing; Willner wanted her inherent phrasing and rhythmic flow. Willner also brought his own crew to play with Williams. This collaboration as unlikely as it might seem on the surface results in something utterly different and yet unmistakably Lucinda Williams. West is a warm, inviting, yet very dark record about grief, the loss of love, anger at a lover who cannot deliver, and embracing the possibility of change. In other words, it's not without its redemptive moments. Williams has put all of her qualities on display at once with an unbridled and unbowed sense of adventure here on her eighth album. She, her bandmates, and Willner have come up with exactly what pop music needs: a real work of art based in contemporary forms and feelings. West is Lucinda Williams' magnum opus thus far, an album that will no doubt attract more than a few new fans, and will give old ones, if they are open enough, a recording to relish. West is flawless; it is actually destined to become a classic. - Thom Jurek, All Music Guide |
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Lucinda Williams Biography
The object of cultish adoration for years, singer/songwriter Lucinda Williams was universally hailed as a major talent by both critics and fellow musicians, but it took quite some time for her to parlay that respect into a measure of attention from t...Full Lucinda Williams Biography
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-- ©2008 All Media Guide, LLC
Pros: Production
Cons: Vocals, lyrics, pace
This is an embarrassment, considering this is the same artist who created Car Wheels on a Gravel Road. Take any song from that classic work and compare it to any song on West, and you'll understand what I mean. Lucinda's voice sounds like it's shot, she's forgotten how to write a good song, and apparently she's forgotten how to ROCK. The facility she showed in writing songs like Drunken Angel and Still I Long for Your Kiss has evidently deserted her. Instead we are treated to repetitive drivel like Mama You Sweet and Are You Alright?, or some kind of lame attempt at rap in Wrap My Head Around That. If she can't do any better than this, she should call it quits. However, if she decides to continue her recording career, I recommend an album of covers. Then maybe she can figure out what a good song is supposed to sound like. ...