Essence (CD - 2001)

Personnel includes: Lucinda Williams (vocals, acoustic guitar); Joy Lynn White (vocals); Charlie Sexton (guitar, loops); Bo Ramsey (resolectric guitar); David Mansfield (violin, viola); Reese Wyanans (Hammond B3 organ); Tony Garnier (acoustic bass); Jim Keltner (drums, percussion); Jim Lauderdale (background vocals).

Producers: Lucinda Williams, Charlie Sexton, Bo Ramsey, Tom Tucker.

Recorded at Mastermix Studios, Minneapolis, Minnesota.

"Get Right With God" won the 2002 Grammy Award for Best Female Rock Vocal Performance.

Personnel: Lucinda Williams (acoustic guitar, electric guitar, resonator guitar); Charlie Sexton (vocals, acoustic guitar, acoustic 12-string guitar, electric guitar, 12-string guitar, slide guitar, piano, drums, percussion, background vocals); Jim Lauderdale (vocals, background vocals); Bo Ramsey (electric guitar, slide guitar); David Mansfield (violin, viola); Reese Wynans (organ); Tony Garnier (acoustic bass); Jim Keltner (drums, percussion); Gary Louris, Joy Lynn White (background vocals).

Audio Mixer: Tom Tucker.

Recording information: Mastermix Studios, Minneapolis, MN.

Photographer: Alan Messer.

Between her well-documented determination to retail full control of her music and the plain-spoken willfulness of her best-known songs, Lucinda Williams is practically the working definition of a strong woman you do not want to mess with, but she reveals a very different side of her musical personality on her sixth album, Essence. Subtle and often stark, Essence is an unusually quiet and frequently downbeat set that depicts a fragile emotional vulnerability which rarely makes its presence felt in Williams' music; there's an unadorned longing in songs like "Blue" and "Lonely Girls" that's new and deeply affecting, and the leaf-in-the-breeze quaver of Williams' voice on "I Envy the Wind" is as heart-rending as anything she's ever committed to tape. But while a blue mood dominates Essence, this isn't an album about the blue funk of heartbreak, but a chronicle of the search for transcendence over sorrow in our lives, as her characters look for a path out of isolation ("Out of Touch"), try to find answers through faith ("Get Right With God"), or reconcile love with the desires of the flesh ("Essence"). As a songwriter, Williams has long shown a knack for charting the human heart and mind with intelligence and economy, and Essence finds her at the peak of her form; the delicacy of this music does not speak of weakness, but of the passion and bravery it takes to bare one's soul. And while Williams has gained a certain infamy for her obsessive perfectionism in the studio, the quality of her work speaks for the wisdom of her decision-making process, and Essence proves how well she understands the art of recording; producing in collaboration with Charlie Sexton (Tom Tucker and Bo Ramsey also contributed), Essence sounds full and rich even in its quietest moments, and her sweet-and-sour voice blends with the arrangements with subtle perfection. Those hoping for another dose of the bluesy roots rock of Car Wheels on a Gravel Road may be disappointed, but if you want to take a deep and compelling look into the heart and soul of a major artist, then you owe it to yourself to hear Essence. ~ Mark Deming

The follow-up to Lucinda Williams's commercial/critical breakthrough CAR WHEELS ON A GRAVEL ROAD is anything but a market-geared, commercial effort. Rather, ESSENCE is the sound of lovelorn melancholy being delicately bottled, then gently let loose in a recording studio with a group of skilled roots-rockers to ease it along on its way to the microphone. The tender beauty of these heart-on-sleeve tunes goes hand in hand with the overwhelming, unapologetic misery of the sentiments expressed in the lyrics. As always, Williams displays her gift for getting the maximum poetic mileage out of the simplest verbal structures. The simply rendered images of heartbreak and emotional isolation are organic and resonant, those qualities being shared by the earthy but carefully arranged production that frames Williams's plaints. The mixture of looseness and purposefulness (along with the album's emotional tone) puts ESSENCE in the same general ballpark as Bob Dylan's Daniel Lanois-produced angst fest TIME OUT OF MIND. minimize