Like Memphis Minnie before her, Lucinda Williams is tired of your shit– and it doesn’t take a rocket doctor to figure out what’s got her blood up. If you think Good Souls Better Angels is a blues record, you’re right. If you think it’s a punk record, you ain’t wrong. Consider it a kind of guerilla rock n’ roll of its time, but absolutely Lucinda, soaring without fear of falling– and hefting a pickaxe come rock bottom. GSBA is full of filthy righteousness, equal parts Lightnin’ and Pop (Iggy, that is), and at times it’s certainly not for the faint of heart. There’s an ebb and flow, a sweetness on tracks like “Big Black Train” and “When The Way Gets Dark” that transforms without shame into the great roiling howls of “Down Past The Bottom” and the lusty gospel of “Big Rotator”. Her politics aren’t worn on a sleeve but brandished like a bastard sword swinging for the head of the snake on “Man Without A Soul”, and she cleaves clean-through the breastbone with “Wakin’ Up”. Williams calls GSBA the rock record she always wanted to make, and I don’t think it’s hyperbole to say it’s her strongest effort to date.
