"Blessed" Reviews

PDL…Christgau had me until he started taking what I consider personal jabs, i.e. pondering weight & sunglasses. Commenting about her weight? Seriously? Did he ever consider those sunglasses could be prescription glasses?

hmm, ok, that paragraph is indeed strange, but then again everything that’s good about the article is a bit odd. everything is deeply personal here. christgau is not kidding when he said he was expecting to be reconverted to LW work after being slightly disappointed with her two last albums. how strange is that? a music critic in a quest to reconnect to an artist? well, it’s not strange at all. but it IS strange to read something like that in a review, especially after you read some of the others, usually the same restrained tone, the same muffled enthusiasm and not really personal.

and i took it more lightly than you two. apparently he hasn’t seen her live in months/years, so while you could question why the hell he mentioned her weight and her glasses, you get the idea that he kind of take LW as both an artist and a person, a person that is getting old, just like he is, i am… i don’t consider it a personal jab. if we’re reading a book and the narrator alerts us that some character has gained weight, this is just a matter-of-fact detail. he meant no harm and i think everything is too straight-from-the-heart to be really offensive. christgau writing somewhat resembles bill buford’s article on LW for the new yorker. no wonder christgau LOVES it:

A year ago, Lucinda Williams was the subject of a grueling, penetrating, National Magazine Award-nominated New Yorker profile by Louisiana-born Granta founder Bill Buford. This isn’t merely the best thing ever written about an artist journalists have long adored. It’s a classic portrait, adulatory and unillusioned all at once, of a “genius” (even if Buford leaves the G-word itself in the mouth of departed guitarist-collaborator Gurf Morlix, and also in a parenthesis). Cultural before he gets personal, he crafts a steamy evocation of Williams’s South, then tells the stories of the dead lovers and other wasted charismatics who inspired her songs–and then demonstrates how songs they inspired aren’t literally about them. He records a balls-out yet strangely theatrical and philosophical public argument between Williams and her bassist boyfriend. And in a matter-of-fact concluding paragraph, he reports that Williams and the bassist are through after five years–as is her writer’s block of about the same duration.

on the other hand, on his crazy little honey review there’s a snippet that i’d consider daring going on distasteful. only human, always.

Whenever I read Christgau’s reviews I feel like he’s primping in a mirror as he writes.

A little out of the loop lately. Who’s playing with her on the new CD? With her at the SXSW show? Thanks!!

@Lafayette wrote:

Meh, personal jab was incorrect description – agree. A very strange and improper observation – better.

Not to mention, from this woman’s point of view, NEVER, EVAH, refer to weight 😯 😆 It’s just not cool.

i think this would be considered a faux pas by every woman in this planet. 🙂

So many reviews on Blessed, don’t think this has been posted.
from EQ

http://www.eqmag.com/article.aspx?id=127123
Love the detail including Lu’s description of her kitchen.

EQ: Why do you like to write at your kitchen table?
Williams: They say when you go to people’s houses you always end up in the kitchen. It’s the heart of the home. I write a lot when I first get up. I make coffee or tea and I feel comfortable in the kitchen, I spread everything out on the table. It’s a handmade Formica-covered wood table, left by the people we bought the house from. It’s in the corner of kitchen, lot of light, skylights, mid-century split level house. It’s all very open. See a lot of plants, foliage out the window.

lwj

btw, i found BLESSED on a book-music store in buenos aires. imported. made me happy.