The Ghosts of Highway 20 – Press & Reviews

From NPR:
“…Williams has circled back to a world-weary affect, a consciously burdened delivery style that emphasizes the emotional labor she’s performing in her music. It’s no wonder, really, that folks are willing to follow her down Southern back roads and into the visceral depths of desire.”

Great review with digital access to the whole album! (as posted on other thread)
http://www.npr.org/2016/01/27/464433522/first-listen-lucinda-williams-the-ghosts-of-highway-20?utm_source=twitter.com&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=nprmusic&utm_term=music&utm_content=20160127

On my second listen.. loving it.
Great groove as they say…

@SamishSeaMike wrote:

Another glowing review from Go Knoxville…

Lucinda Williams’ new album “The Ghosts of Highway 20” may be her best since “Car Wheels On a Gravel Road.”
“The Ghosts of Highway 20″ is not built for a cursory listen. It demands you take some time with it. In this case, it’s worth it.”

http://www.knoxnews.com/entertainment/columnists/wayne-bledsoe/wayne-bledsoe-lucinda-williams-ghosts-of-highway-20-a-ride-worth-taking-2a565a6a-7997-587c-e053-0100–366889281.html

Yes, those bearded Tennesseeans sure do know how to turn a phrase, Mike. I think Highway 20 is a U.S. highway rather than an interstate, albeit four-lane for most or all of it. Not 100% sure. In Lucinda’s [childhood] day, lots of two lane traffic I imagine.

http://ww2.kqed.org/news/2016/01/31/ty-segall-lucinda-williams-and-anderson-paak-kick-off-the-years-musical-highlights

Lucinda Williams, ‘The Ghosts of Highway 20’

Lucinda Williams has covered a lot of ground, musically and emotionally, in 35 years or so of recording. But nothing before has been quite like where she goes at the end of this two-CD exploration. The closing “Faith and Grace” plays on for nearly 13 minutes, by the end becoming more a prayer than a song, as guitarist Bill Frisell surrounds Williams’ repeated testaments with curlicues and sparks, like a Van Gogh night sky.

“Faith and Grace will help me run this race,” she sings. And clearly she’s needed it to get through this journey, which started, more than 80 minutes earlier, with words of pure desolation, in the song “Dust”: “There’s a sadness so deep the sun seems black.”

Lighthearted romp this is not. But the ride that comes from there to grace is a rewarding one. Well, it’s Lucinda Williams, so you knew that already.

“The Ghosts of Highway 20,” Williams’ second consecutive double-CD, following 2014’s bracingly ambitious “Down Where the Spirit Meets the Bone,” is a ride — figuratively along the road that marked her youth in the South, literally through her memories. But as with all of Williams’ best, and this is very much among her best, “Highway 20” is really about the person she is now, wrestling to come to terms with where the road has led her, and most profoundly with losses along the way.

On the one hand, it’s a tour of the South of her youth, the places she lived and saw growing up, so the gothic hues come with the territory. On the other hand, it’s as personal an exploration of emotions and the very fabric of her being as she’s ever done — which is saying a lot.

And it comes with some of the most evocative, involving music she’s ever made. For most of the album, the music centers on the dynamic pairing of guitarists Frisell (one of the most inventive figures in modern jazz, at once lyrical and challenging) and longtime Williams associate Greg Leisz (who plays both conventional guitar and steel, for which he is best known, and also co-produced the album with Williams and Tom Overby). Their prodding interplay both illuminates and elaborates the complex emotions, not necessarily relieving the darkness, but giving it character and shape as they serpentine through songs that are allowed to stretch as called for.

“Death Came,” a wrenching lament for her mother, who died in 2004, is as stark an examination of loss as she’s ever done, which is also saying something. Williams’ talent for distilling complex emotions to the barest perfect words and images, is at its fullest effect here as she places herself between the tangible memories and the unanswerable but essentially human questions. The music here is just as stark, a simple waltz, gently scribed by Frisell and Leisz, with only the slightest support from bassist David Sutton and drummer Butch Norton.

Death is also there in “If My Love Could Kill,” which came from watching her father, poet Miller Williams, fade away with Alzheimer’s, a different kind of death. (His real death happened shortly after the release of her last album and the impending loss can be felt throughout it.) Here the emotion is anger, pure and simple. Her voice is rather flat, resigned but seething underneath as she sings, “Murderer of poets…. Destroyer of hope.” Her father is also present in “Dust,” the opening track quoted above, inspired by one of his poems.

The words of two other artists also come into play, with “House of Earth,” music written by Williams to unused Woody Guthrie lyrics, and an effectively spare version of Bruce Springsteen’s “Factory.”

Through it all, the memories of the places of childhood are the sources of salvation, or at least potential salvation, the touchstones of her life. The very Springsteenian “Louisiana Story,” one of several songs with L.A. guitar ace Leisz replacing Frisell, name-checks some of the places where she lived in that state, sketching some scenes right out of Harper Lee or William Faulkner. “If you were from here, you would fear me to the death along with the ghost of Highway 20,” she warns in the title song, before ending on a more hopeful note: “My saving grace is with the ghost of Highway 20.”

@DavidW wrote:

Best Buy has it advertised on their web site as “CD – w/Book.”
What is that book? Is it a Best Buy exclusive?

I’m assuming the book is the liner notes and lyrics that Lu includes in her CD’s. I am so appreciative that Lucinda does that still… I savor the reading the lyrics. It’s like having a little book of poetry included with the CD 🙂