Melodic memories, poetic potential
Lucinda Williams is an absolute powerhouse of a singer-songwriter and drips nostalgia on her fifteenth studio album release Stories from a Rock n Roll Heart. Williams’ discography is extensive, and with this release she grants us a mix between melodic memories of years past and poetic potential for the future. At the heart of the album is a resilient ember only Williams can create. Having suffered a stroke in November 2020, Williams has said that “writing had been part of [her] rehabilitation.” No stranger to strumming guitar strings with her band, this was one thing that Williams had to learn how to navigate without. While writing the songs, Williams would use her vocals to convey the sounds and melodies of the tracks she was carefully crafting in her head.
Williams kicks off the album with “Let’s Get The Band Back Together,” a song steeped in funky rhythms. She takes to her vocals as a seasoned veteran alongside featured artists Margo Price and Buddy Miller. Between the drums and the keys, it is easy to envision a local dive with a jovial line of two-steppers shimmying to the beat. Around 1:50 there is a classic electric guitar solo offset by blues keys that is the way to show that, indeed, the band is back together.
If a sultry mixture of Bruce Springsteen’s “Born to Run” and The Cure’s “Friday I’m in Love” existed it would be Williams “New York Comeback.” Cymbal heavy drumbeats offset William’s vocals, which effortlessly drawl into vibrato, lead off as she is later accompanied by none other than Springsteen and his wife Patti Scialfa throughout the song. “You can hear a pin drop in this place, hoping for a miracle tonight” Williams sings, as Springsteen and her recant the chorus in “you wouldn’t want to miss my New York Comeback.”
Written in earnest after Tom Petty’s death, Williams who played many shows with him throughout her career, found herself writing “Stolen Moments.” The drum beat echoes “Learning to Fly,” a Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers classic. “30,000 feet up in the air, I swear, you’re with me there, like a prayer, you’re with me there” — the song builds to a classic rock culmination of gritty guitars and thrumming undercurrent basslines that fade out slowly.
Joining Williams again for vocals Springsteen appears on the album’s namesake, “Rock n Roll Heart.” Not to be confused with Eric Clapton’s “I’ve Got a Rock N’roll Heart,” Williams lyrically calls out to those who find themselves on the “outside of the outsiders.” The ones whose lives changed the moment they “heard that song.” In true rock n roll fashion, the band ignites at the first beat leading the way to the anthemic chorus “As long as you got a rock n’ roll heart, you can’t be broken or torn apart.” It alternates between funky blues rhythms and classic rock guitars effortlessly.
In rhythmic effervescence “Where the Song Will Find Me” is a slower number that truly showcases William’s songwriting brilliance. The tragic tale of the artist, “the errand of a fool has carried me this far, to a place where the song can find me.” It speaks of the impermanence of artistic endeavors and the patience in experiencing life in earnest. In essence, it is in “the madding crowd,” the “walk across the bridge,” the act of “[staring] up at the stars” that will expose the writer to the stories that need to be told.
In closing the album with “Never Gonna Fade Away” Williams solidifies herself as a songstress of past, present and future generations. As a Grammy award-winning songwriter, Lucinda Williams continues to enthrall and enamor, allowing us to experience her contagiously enigmatic rock and roll heart.
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