Track Listing

1. Are You Alright?
2. Mama You Sweet
3. Learning How to Live
4. Fancy Funeral
5. Unsuffer Me
6. Everything Has Changed
7. Come On
8. Where Is My Love?
9. Rescue
10. What If
11. Wrap My Head Around That
12. Words
13. West

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #3729 in Music
• Brand: Dig
• Released on: 2007-02-13
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: .18 pounds

Amazon.com
Though the arrangements stray from Lucinda Williams's motherlode blend of blues, country, and folk, West may well be her best album. It is easily her most musically adventurous, and often her most lyrically inspired. Williams's singing has never sounded better, from the aching tenderness of "Where Is My Love?" to the ravaged catharsis of "Unsuffer Me." New York producer Hal Willner, who has worked with artists such as Marianne Faithful and Lou Reed, enlists the support of eclectic progressives like guitarist Bill Frisell, keyboardist Bob Burger, and violinist Jenny Scheinman, along with harmonies from the Jayhawks' Gary Louris, to weave a subtly rich sonic tapestry. Much of the material was inspired by the death of Williams's beloved mother ("Mama You Sweet," "Fancy Funeral") and the bitter breakup of a relationship (the jagged-edged emasculation of "Come On," the repetitive incantation of "Wrap My Head Around That"), though "Are You Alright?," "Learning How to Live," and "Everything Has Changed" could reflect the aftermath of both. Other highlights include "Rescue," with a languid subtlety and ambient pulse reminiscent of Beth Orton, and the dreamy, wistful title track. Where Williams's music has long cut close to the bone, the best of West slices right through it. --Don McLeese

Lucinda Wiliams Photos

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Essence

Bill Friscis Warren, No Depression Jan/Feb 2007 Bill Friscis Warren, No Depression
"...the album is easily Lucinda's most freewheeling and expansive to date."

Relix Feb/Mar 2007
"...West will feel like therapy, a soul-stirring shoulder to cry on...there is plenty to love here"

Customer Reviews

A bluesy mix with a note of hope and redemption.
It may only be March but I have to say that this is going to be one of my records of the year.
Lucinda Williams has always been a peerless songwriter.She writes about lust, love, and losslike nobody else, and on this album, co-produced with Hal Wilner, she takes on such subjects as her mother's death, the state of the world, and yet another tumultuous relationship which ended badly. It's her usual tough stuff, but this time, Lucinda sneaks in a note of hope and even redemption in the very bluesy mix.
The album's 13 songs together form a largely down-tempo disc, but "West" doesn't only find Williams in a somber mood.
"Mama You Sweet" is upbeat and "Come On" is a nasty, almost raunchy kiss-off, musically akin to "Atonement" from her last album, 2003's "World Without Tears".
She injects doses of hope and light in tracks like "What If", in which she imagines a world where the president wears pink and a prostitute is a queen.
There are uncomfortable truths here, carried on easy-going melodies. "Fancy Funeral" is a wry look at death's priorities that flows as easily as drink.
Williams lost her mother and an errant lover as these songs were being written. These two truncated relationships fill "West" with exquisitely turned suffering; Williams and band provides the expert musical succour. Hal Wilner is the producer who organised this record's quietly unconventional sounds as Williams wanted them.
Equally raw and sensual is the unravelling blues of "Unsuffer Me", where Williams's ravaged voice begs: "Undo my logic/ Undo my fear" with an intensity that verges on the erotic.
Subtle and heroically blunt by turns, "West" is a meditation on abandonment and recovery, abandon and regret that deserves to be hauled out of the Americana ghetto and celebrated everywhere wounded hearts beat.
This collection sees her at her best with emotion, raw power and intoxicating, intense tunes which should appeal to much more than country and folk fans.
Four years on from "World Without Tear"s comes this studio album from Lucinda Williams, her eighth in a 37-year career - she doesn't rush.
OK, the predominant theme is pain, and no one does pain as eloquently as Lucinda - or as multifariously.
Yet "West" is all musical mood swings: from stoic, heartbreak country to fierce revenge rock, retro pop to folk, poetry to rap, mellow California to dark LA rock.
What makes Lucinda Williams such an important country artist, besides the excellent songwriting and that sultry, scarred southern voice, is her skill at stretching the genre's boundaries while mining its essence.
Which, often as not, is pain.

So intense.
"West" is Lucinda's eighth studio album and simply quite brilliant. Nobody does that low-down dirty country blues like Lucinda, locking into a languid, aching groove and sending shivers down the spine of any living thing within range of that earthy vibrato.
Not that she is interested in staying within some country comfort zone, "Wrap My Head Around That" straying into uncharted territory.
It is not the first time she has slowed a lyric to spoken level, but this is a rhythmic bona fide country rap epic, a compelling narrative over nine minutes long, punctuated by snarling guitar chops and solos.

"Words" is another wise old tale written on that cracked parchment of a voice, wafting over an intoxicating melody.

She quotes her father, literature and poetry professor Miller Williams on West's sleeve notes: "You do not know what wars are going on down there where the spirit meets the bone", and these songs are a product of an internal turmoil caused by her mother's death and an intense relationship that spectacularly crashed and burned.

Put brutally selfishly, Lucinda's loss is our gain, gut-wrenching songs like "Unsuffer Me" burn with the agony and ecstasy of "Essence", and "Fancy Funeral" has the rare power to reduce grown men and women to tears.
She has assembled a great band including Bill Frisell, Jim Keltner and her long-time guitarist, the superb Doug Petibone, who do ample justice to this scintillating set of songs.
I like it. You will be moved, to say the least.

Everything she does is worth waiting.
Late-blooming singer-songwriter Lucinda Williams is finding life no easier in middle age; the death of her mother and the end of a stormy relationship have combined to make her eighth album her bleakest so far.
The stately strum of opener "Are You Alright?" is uncharacteristically pretty, before the mood darkens on "Mama You Sweet" and soon she is singing, "The pain courses through every vein, every limb".
"Wrap My Head Around That" is the darkest place, nine minutes of snaking bass and words of betrayal, and although "Come On" provides variety by increasing the volume, the raw guitars sound even more pained than the singer's lonely rasp. It's hard going, but the quality of the songwriting shines through even the deepest gloom.
She's not exactly prolific, "West" is only her 8th studio album in a 37-year career and her first for four years, but everything Lucinda Williams does is worth waiting for.
The 50-something American singer/songwriter is a very special talent. A wonderfully gifted and honest songwriter with an ability to cross genres from the blues to folk and from country to soul and still fuse it into one deeply satisfying and moving whole.
Because although the quantity might be lacking, the quality never is.
Then there's her incredible croaky voice that can snarl or seduce depending on her mood.