Lucinda Williams long ago earned the right to make any record she damn well pleases. In recent years, that freedom has led her down a gravel road to re-record earlier work, sample other genres, and pay tribute to her heroes as well as add to her own legacy as a great American songwriter. One of the reasons listeners have so readily followed Williams down these different paths is that she has remained an authentic voice with something to say—and on World’s Gone Wrong, boy, does she have a bone to pick. The latest from Williams doesn’t provide a survival guide to hard times, nor does it promise that things will necessarily get better. Instead, she offers a letter to listeners assuring them that they are not alone in their struggles or the fight to regain what America has lost.
The title track and lead single look at daily life from the perspective of a middle-class couple. Over glowing electric guitars and a wafting Hammond B-3, Williams’ familiar smoky voice paints a picture too many Americans know by heart these days. But it’s not just that sales are down at the husband’s car lot or that his wife is doomscrolling through the news between shifts; Williams dignifies their struggles by peeling back a layer. He feels genuinely licked, she’s losing faith, and they can’t be gaslit into believing that things are actually going well. “Come on, baby / We gotta be strong / Dark days are getting long,” Williams rallies them. She ends with a sweet moment: the woman trying to distract them from their worries by turning on some Miles Davis and dancing barefoot. Williams desperately wants to believe that this “every-couple” can still make it, and we find ourselves yearning to believe her for all our sakes.
Much of World’s Gone Wrong finds Williams surveying the mess from different vantages and musical styles. Legendary gospel singer Mavis Staples lends her voice to Bob Marley’s eerily prophetic “So Much Trouble in the World.” Williams’ crack band have no trouble fusing country rock with wah-wah nods to reggae as she, Staples, and Marley’s words pull from their disparate experiences to find a common struggle. “The dream is deferred / And the churches are burning,” observes Williams as she sings the blues on “Black Tears,” borrowing from a long tradition of blood, tear-stained cheeks, and oppressed voices. And the stark and scathing “Punchline” turns skyward for answers to our shared plight but ultimately lands on humankind’s wickedness, deceit, and cruelty as the reasons so many of us are down and out.
It’s hard to make a listenable album that focuses song after song on how our country is going to hell in a 10-gallon hat. The pokey “Low Life” offers us a cocktail and a barstool but fails to take our minds off the harsher matters that await us after last call. And yet, Williams and her band more often than not find a groove that makes our shared downward spiral feel downright danceable. “Now your blood is running cold / And you’re on the road to hell,” she bites acerbically on the driving “How Much Did You Get for Your Soul.” It’s a stinging indictment but too much of a jam to skip over. Guitars circle like vultures on “Something’s Gotta Give,” as Williams points out the anger, division, and danger permeating the air we breathe in each and every day as Americans. It’s her most pointed piece of criticism on World’s Gone Wrong: the fear that we’re about to cross a line that could break our very spirit. As on the title track, Brittney Spencer’s urgent backing vocals help Williams sound the alarm for our souls.
The final moments on World’s Gone Wrong find Williams turning from observation to resistance. Norah Jones beautifully duets with her on the clunky, spiritual closer, “We’ve Come Too Far to Turn Around.” For all our shortcomings and the sins of our past, Williams urges us to press on towards something better. “Stand up and fight,” she sings a song earlier on the funky protest march of “Freedom Speaks.” It’s the call to action that prevents the record from becoming a sort of doomscrolling of its own. “So, let me remind you / Just what’s at stake,” Williams tells us. “Apathy will blind you / Until it’s too late.” And that’s the greatest fear of making an album like World’s Gone Wrong: that it’s already too late and will fall upon deaf ears, hardened hearts, and hopeless souls. God, let’s hope not.
