Disco Stu

I don’t know, but it seems unlikely. Unless she’s going to double back from Iowa, she’d have to play either on July 29 or 30…and she’s in New York on the 28th. That said, I highly recommend heading up to Milwaukee on the 31st…the Pabst is a great venue and her show there should be spectacular (presale starts tomorrow at noon)!

Damn! Hot Blood alone would’ve been worth driving down to Tennessee for. Thanks for posting.

I really enjoyed both nights, but I’d agree that the second night was a little better. Lucinda seemed a little more relaxed and did a little more talking between songs, I liked the setlist even better, and Still I Long For Your Kiss was absolutely electrifying. I saw both shows from the front row, only five feet from Lucinda all night, and it was amazing. I’m still undecided about the new band – the bass player’s all right, but sometimes it seems like the drummer’s a little overpowering. Didn’t think he was bad, though.

We did get an extra song the second night. I was able to see the setlist taped to the floor from where I was standing, and the first night she didn’t deviate from the plan at all. The second night, she had listed Can’t Let Go as an alternate to Disgusted, and she completely changed up the second encore. On the setlist, it was listed as:

I Envy The Wind/West
World Without Tears/People Talkin’

I would’ve loved I Envy The Wind, but it was really great to hear two lesser-played songs from World Without Tears. She apparently did Crescent City as a response to requests from the crowd. All in all, a fantastic show – she’s just as great of a performer as she’s always been.

Carrie Rodriguez was wonderful, too. I thought some of her slower songs dragged a little, but the uptempo numbers were great. She’s got a great voice and man, can she play the fiddle. Don’t miss her set.

I’ve definitely got to agree with antetomic: Cold, Cold Heart is my favorite cover she’s done. A close second would be some of the versions of Positively 4th Street from the early ’90s.

Thanks for posting. It’s good to see Right in Time and Still I Long for Your Kiss back in there, two songs I’d love to catch in Chicago.

After spending a day with this album, I’ve revised my opinion of it quite a bit, which is always a good sign. An album that grows and changes as I listen to it is a worthwhile album, and I’m not surprised that Lucinda’s put out another heavyweight. She’s one of the few artists I can think of who has never put out a truly bad album; though I have my favorites, I can see the artistry behind all of her work.

That said, I had my trepidations about West. I had heard nine of the thirteen tracks either in person or on bootlegs and I wasn’t sure what I thought of the songs. As much as this kind of talk has driven Lucinda crazy, I have to admit that I inevitably compare everything she’s done to Car Wheels…it’s the one album that absolutely amazed me when I first heard it. I like what someone else said here about how all of her other albums need multiple listenings to appreciate. It seems that most of her work is so subtle that it’s easy to miss what’s so great about it. Anyway, having a good idea of what the album was going to sound like I approached it cautiously, hoping it wouldn’t be the biggest disappointment since Dylan’s Modern Times.

A lot has been said about the production; I don’t think the album’s overproduced, it’s just different from what she’s done before. It does remind me of Essence in the way that it all hangs together so well. The album opens with the one-two punch of Are You Alright? and Mama You Sweet, two deceptively simple songs that are melancholy without being melodramatic. Lucinda’s always been great at crafting thoroughly depressing songs, but I don’t see this album as being as sad as much of the last two. There’s a note of optimism intermingled with the sadness, much as there is in Sweet Old World. Anyway, Learning How To Live fills out a very nice opening trifecta, and then it starts to get a bit inconsistent.

A major problem I have with the album is that for all of the songs I had previously heard except one, the live versions were either superior or equal to the album. Where Is My Love? is the only song that the album does a great job of taking beyond the live versions she’s been performing since 2005. Everything Has Changed, Words, and West are all okay, but the others lose some of the magic they had live. Come On is just plain weak on the album; you’ve got to hear Lucinda’s almost primal scream when she does this live to understand how much the album version lacks. She did this one at the first show I saw and it left a huge impression on me, despite the fact that it was months before I found a live recording of the song. Rescue still sounds best to my ears in the stark arrangement of it that circulates on the New Songs compilation that someone put together a while back; the tension between the overly talkative audience, the relatively low quality of the recording, and the heartbreaking beauty of Lucinda’s voice is priceless and, to be fair, would’ve been impossible to equal in the studio.

I do have to criticize Wrap My Head Around That as the clear low point of the album. I give Lucinda credit for being audicious enough to record a track like this, but a song like this fails because the genius of Lucinda’s music is the way that her unique voice and lyrics combine to create something distinctive; here, the lyrics feel cobbled together and there’s little emotion in her voice. The decision to repeat most of the song and make this an epic-length track further highlights how this one should’ve been an outtake. Okay, maybe that’s a little harsh; I will say that I liked this one a little more today than yesterday. Nevertheless, I was hoping for some deft wordplay on the level of Righteously, and I didn’t get it.

While I do wish that she’d put some other tracks on this album – Tears of Joy, Jailhouse Tears, and Well, Well, Well are the three that instantly come to mind – I will admit that my main problem with the album is a personal one. I like her strongly roots-based music the best, and I’ll probably never like albums like West and World Without Tears as much as her earlier work simply because she’s branched out. It’s a personal thing for me, and as I hope I’ve made clear, I do think that West is just as much a piece of art as everything else Lucinda’s given us. I hope her career continues to blossom and that her newfound happiness remains; she’s created so many masterpieces of pain and darkness that she deserves love and peace. And if we get some happy love songs out of it eventually, all the better of us, too.