Lucinda Williams is known best for the crags of her voice, an idiosyncratic instrument capable of curling, souring, or (in its own peculiar way) soaring as the song demands. She, too, is an inarguable pioneer of what has become Americana, with her sophisticated songwriting bound to composite foundations of blues and honky-tonk, gospel and soul, folk and rock since the start of her career nearly 40 years ago. But the single unifying thread for Williams’ very circuitous career might be her own resilience.
Indeed, Williams’ doggedness pushed her from a blues-and-country cover artist in the '70s to an aspiring songwriter with a string of broken record deals in the '80s to, in the '90s, a 45-year-old singer who suddenly began to win Grammys, appear on "Saturday Night Live," and be mentioned alongside forebears and contemporaries named Dylan, Young, and Springsteen. Several years ago, the dissolution of her longtime home, Lost Highway Records, empowered Williams to launch her own imprint and audaciously issue consecutive double-albums. As if to spite an industry with which she’s forever wrestled, 2014’s Down Where the Spirit Meets the Bone and the new The Ghosts of Highway 20 rank among the best works of her career.
Williams recorded much of the material on The Ghosts of Highway 20 during the same prolific sessions and with the same sterling band that yielded the 20-track Down Where the Spirit Meets the Bone. Surrounded by understated guitar god Bill Frisell, pedal steel master Greg Leisz, and a rotating rhythm section, Williams focuses largely on the nuances of her singing. She aces the challenge, switching between roles with the precision and skill of a method actor. During the soft and sweet "Place in My Heart," where she offers a friend consolation even when it’s a burden to bear, she conjures Patsy Cline, had the country singer survived past the age of 30. But for "Dust," her second update of a poem written by her father, Williams’ voice indicts someone she’s grown tired of tending to. "Even your thoughts are dust," she seethes in the refrain, extending the simple syllables until her voice collapses in exasperation. Still, she seems to smile and wink her way through "Can’t Close the Door on Love," the sharpest ode to romantic devotion she’s ever made.
As she did on Down Where the Spirit Meets the Bone, Williams plays stylistic hopscotch here, jumping between brooding rock and bouncing gospel, swaying balladry and drifting folk. But these 14 songs hold together as a set because they offer a dozen different perspectives on perseverance. She’s an honest survivor, as capable of empathizing with friends tempted by the dark side of the partying life (the slinky "I Know All About It") as she is condemning her own miseries and shortcomings (the flinty "If My Love Could Kill"). During "Bitter Memory," a spirited throwback to the acoustic barnstormers of her youth, she shouts down nostalgia completely, her voice cracking as she demands that the past just let her be.
Even death seems incapable of daunting Williams: At one point, she smirks at suicide, subverting a gospel-blues mold to dare heaven to try and take her. And both "Death Came," a stunning reflection on mortality that rivals some of Nick Cave’s best work, and "If There’s a Heaven" wrestle with the itinerant loneliness of those who outlast the ones they love. She’s not scared of death; she’s scared of more misery. "I’ve seen the face of hell/ I know the place pretty damn well," she sings, delivering the words with conversational conviction. "But when you go, will you let me know if there’s a heaven out there?"
In the past, Williams aspired to make a double album, but she says now that record label executives typically dissuaded her, citing sales figures and shortened attention spans. Now that she’s issued two of them in less than two years, it’s clear that she can manage such long stretches just fine; even listening to the 34 songs of Down Where the Spirit Meets the Bone and The Ghosts of Highway 20 in sequence feels less like a chore than a long trip led by an expert navigator with good stories to share. (She and the boys do settle into the occasional rut, so there are five or so tracks that do feel redundant.) By and large, though, the ups and downs, successes and failures, loves and losses of Williams’ six decades have allowed her to embody and express a range of characters with candor, honesty, and faithfulness. She’s a singing testament to sticking around and, at 63, she is more versatile than she’s ever been.
