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(More customer reviews)Williams' folk-country cult status expanded into the mainstream with Patty Loveless' 1990 cover of "The Night's Too Long," and her back catalog became highly sought after when Mary Chapin Carpenter's 1993 cover of "Passionate Kisses" hit the top five, and won the songwriter a Grammy. But it was another five years before Williams finished and issued her followup, "Car Wheels on a Gravel Road," and it's at the point of that 1998 re-emergence that she made this appearance, her third, on Austin City Limits.
After all the misfires and arguments with her labels, Williams launched into this tour with a lot of pent-up artistic energy, and she pulled together a tremendous band that featured a guitar army augmenting her own acoustic, with Kenny Vaughn and John Jackson on electrics and Jim Lauderdale on second acoustic. The stereo and multichannel mixes winningly separate the players so that the contribution of each (particularly Vaughn and Jackson's array of unusual axes) can be heard distinctly. With bass, drums, organ and accordion, there's still a surprising amount of room for Williams' vocals and Lauderdale's harmonies.
The song list draws heavily from "Car Wheels," including all but three of the album's titles. The set is filled out with tracks from "Lucinda Williams" and "Sweet Old World," as well as a cover of Lil' Son Jackson's "Disgusted" that dates back to Williams' 1979 Smithsonian Folkways album, "Ramblin'." It's a balanced portrait of the sweet, sad and sandpaper sides of Williams' catalog, and a deep helping of her Southern-grounded songwriting.
Williams is visually transported throughout the performance. The close-ups of her at the microphone find her gazing without focus, lost in the stories of her lyrics. Terse song introductions and a quick round of band introductions are her only interaction with the audience. Her interplay with the band is purely musical, as she never seems to engage them visually; Jim Lauderdale can often be seen in the background singing harmony, watching Williams as she looks straight ahead.
The set reaches an emotional peak with a hypnotic 8-minute version of "Joy" on which Jackson's battle-worn Telecaster gets a fine slide workout, and Vaughn answers back with a blistering solo of his own. The electric catharsis appears to liberate Williams from her introspective trance as she launches into the closing "Can't Let Go." Crisp video and Stereo/DTS/5.1 audio tracks make this a must-have for Williams' fans, and a strong introduction for those just finding her as an artist. [©2005 hyperbolium dot com]
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Track Listing 1 – Pineola 2 – Metal Firecracker 3 – Car Wheels On A Gravel Road 4 – Right In Time 5 – Drunken Angel 6 – Greenville 7 – Lake Charles 8 – Changed The Locks 9 – Joy 10 – Disgusted 11 – Jackson 12 – Sweet Old World 13 – Passionate Kisses 14 – Something About What Happens When We Talk 15 – Still I long For Your Kiss 16 – Can't Let Go
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