ROUTES & BRANCHES
featuring the very best of americana, alt.country and roots music
April 26, 2020
Scott Foley, purveyor of dust

WHAT's SO GREAT ABOUT APRiL?!!

Had to be some quality releases this month in order to hold off including Western Centuries, White Buffalo and Sarah Siskind on the list of our favorite stuff from the past thirty days (listed in order of appearance):

Ashley McBryde, Never Will  (Warner, Apr 3)
Caleb Caudle, Better Hurry Up  (Baldwin County Public Records, Apr 3)
Pokey LaFarge, Rock Bottom Rhapsody  (New West, Apr 10)
Lucinda Williams, Good Souls Better Angels  (Hwy 20, Apr 24)
Whitney Rose, We Still Go To Rodeos  (MCG, Apr 24)

Back in 2014, Lucinda Williams had just freed herself from years of sometimes contentious relationships with record labels.  She celebrated accordingly with the first project to be released by her own Highway 20 Records, a double-CD called Down Where the Spirit Meets the Bone.  Prior to the street date, New Yorker editor Bill Buford published a tremendous piece of music writing wherein he explored the Delta blues that gave birth to Williams' peerless blend of roots music.

Fast forward six years and a few more LPs.  AARP Magazine has shared an enthusiastic appreciation of her new collection, Good Souls Better Angels.  At 67 years old, she's earned her subscription.  More importantly, after 40 years making music, Lucinda Williams stands as an artist to whom others are compared, rather than one who is likened to others.  Nevertheless, she is still plagued by yahoos like the recent Facebook commentator who encouraged her to lighten up because didn't she see that her fans loved her.

Truth be told, Williams' 14th album, Good Souls is as consistently heavy a musical gesture as she has made in a career unafraid to explore themes of desire and doubt.  As with her forebears like Robert Johnson, Dylan, Leonard Cohen and Tom Waits, she delivers those dark verses in the language of the blues.  Her new set is dripping in it, conjured nearly live in studio with Buick 6, the trio who has labored at her side since Williams began this independent phase of her career:  Butch Norton (drums), David Sutton (bass) and the otherworldly guitar of Stuart Mathis.  Plus, for the first time since her seminal 1998 Car Wheels On a Gravel Road, Williams is again assisted by engineer Ray Kennedy, on whose vintage equipment these songs were set to tape.

Lucinda Williams explains Good Souls thusly: Basically, the world's falling apart.  Then she spends much of the next sixty minutes justifying her take. As you might expect, she reserves much of her venom for the current political predicament.  Raised by a family with a strong vein of civil rights and activism, politics has been present in her musical mix almost since the start.  That said, Williams has rarely been as direct as she is on "Man Without a Soul", a howling storm of guitar and thundering drums that damns the current President in no uncertain terms:  Now the exits will be closing / A sad life will be exposed / No dealer and no deals.  "Bad News Blues" is a filthy stomp bemoaning the inescapable lure of media noise, the unreliability of who says what: Who's gonna believe liars and lunatics / Fools and thieves and clowns and hypocrites.

Little vitriol is spared here on the politics of relationship.  Williams reaches back to repurpose Memphis Minnie's powerful 1937 side "You Can't Rule Me", a throwback rocker that reads like Black Keys blasting from the garage.  She's commented recently that a decade of wedded bliss with husband and cowriter Tom Overby has made stories of spurned lovers seem disingenuous.  Nevertheless, one of Good Souls' most impactful moments finds Williams relating a story of an earlier abusive relationship.  With its thumping bass and guitars that slice and strike, "Wakin' Up" boldly chronicles her struggles to process the trauma: I threw a punch, somehow I missed it / I should've split, thought I could fix it.

Largely owing to Stuart Mathis' blistering guitars, Good Souls is more blues-rock than country-blues.  Lucinda Williams has written a career's worth of beautiful songs, but truth trumps prettiness on her new collection.  Even when she sneaks a fiddle into the mix on "Pray the Devil Back to Hell", it scratches and shrieks along with a gutter-deep beat.  Even more inward-turning songs like "Big Black Train" cast a dark spell.  A striking reflection about depression and anxiety, the tune reads like an anti-"People Get Ready":  I don't wanna be no special rider / I don't wanna get on board.  Like Neil Young or Waits, she has pursued her muse into a dark and personal crossroads, her voice alternately weary and storming but like nothing else on record.

Don't tell her to cheer up.  Good Souls Better Angels is the record Lucinda Williams set out to make, an Old Testament force of nature that portrays God (the Big Rotator) spinnin' the world like a top.  And has there ever been a better time for an album that calls its shots so boldly?  Dragging listeners through the crucible fire, it's nothing but surprising when we're left feeling cleansed by the ordeal.  With her lyrical repetition and stream-of-consciousness delivery, Williams offers a Van Morrison-like balm for the spirit on "When the Way Gets Dark" and the closer "Good Souls".  These acts as prayers of protection and guidance, hushed words of encouragement during an uncommonly challenging time: Don't give up / It's gonna be alright / You're gonna be okay ... Beautiful.


- Reckless Kelly, "Lonesome On My Own" American Jackpot / American Girls  (No Big Deal, May 22)
- Eileen Rose, "Old Time Reckoning" Muscle Shoals  (Holy Wreckords, 20)
- Texas Gentlemen, "Ain't Nothin' New" Floor It!!!  (New West, Jul 17)  D
- Larkin Poe, "Keep Diggin'" Self Made Man  (Tricki-Woo, Jun 12)
- Hollis Brown, "Highway One (feat. Nikki Lane)" 3 Shots  (HBrown, 15)
- John Baumann, "Next Ride Around the Sun" Country Shade  (Next Waltz, Jun 5)  D
- Sarah Siskind, "Punk Rock Girl" Modern Appalachia  (Soundly, 20)
- Flatland Cavalry, "War With My Mind" single  (Next Waltz, 20)  D
- Hayes Carll, "Times Like These (acoustic)" single  (Dualtone, 20)  D
^ Lucinda Williams, "Shadows & Doubts" Good Souls Better Angels  (Hwy 20, 20)
- Nathaniel Rateliff, "Willie's Birthday Song" single  (Marigold, 20)  D
- NQ Arbuckle, "Love Songs For the Long Game" single  (Six Shooter, 20)  D
- Peter Oren, "Ones and Ohs" Better Pastures  (Western Vinyl, 20)
- Jenny O, "I Don't Want To Live Alone Anymore" New Truth  (Mama Bird, Jun 19)  D
- Gourds, "Omaha" Shinebox  (Munich, 01)
- X, "Cyrano de Berger's Back" Alphabetland  (Fat Possum, 20)
- Chuck Prophet, "Nixonland" Land That Time Forgot  (Yep Roc, Aug 21)
- Whitney Rose, "I'd Rather Be Alone" We Still Go to Rodeos  (MCG, 20)
- Israel Nash, "Southern Coasts" Topaz EP  (Desert Folklife, 20)
- White Buffalo, "Faster Than Fire" On the Widow's Walk  (Snakefarm, 20)
- Lowest Pair, "We Are Bleeding" Perfect Plan  (Delicata, 20)
- Scud Mountain Boys, "Scratch Ticket" Massachusetts  (Sub Pop, 96)
- Joe Ely, "Man and His Dog" Love In the Midst of Mayhem  (Rack 'Em, 20)
- Chatham County Line, "Guitar (for Guy Clark)" Strange Fascination  (Yep Roc, 20)
- Shelby Lynne, "Off My Mind" Shelby Lynne  (Everso, 20)
- Richmond Fontaine, "Two Broken Hearts" Post to Wire  (Winner's Casino, 04)
- Jason Isbell, "Dreamsicle" Reunions  (Southeastern, May 15)
- Will Hoge, "The Curse" Tiny Little Movies  (EDLO, Jun 26)
- Steve Earle, "It's About Blood" Ghosts of West Virginia  (New West, May 22)
- Edith Frost, "Sing Me Back Home" Executioner's Last Songs: Vol 1  (Bloodshot, 02)


You might be surprised how hard it is to fit all the new music we'd like into just thirty songs.  And every Episode we're forced to remove a handful of quality selections, owing to our arbitrary commitment to the number thirty.  You'll always find more by clicking on A Routes & Branches Guide To Feeding Your Monster.  This week, fresh off his stint as a Panhandler, Texas country songwriter John Baumann has scheduled his next solo release, Country Shade, due on Next Waltz at the dawn of June.  I guess I sorta lost track of Jenny O after her superb Automechanic in 2013.  She'll give me another chance when she shares New Truth on Mama Bird come June 19.  Speaking of folks we haven't heard from in a spell, expect Thad Cockrell to drop If In Case You Feel the Same on his new label home, ATO Records on June 26.  All of the sudden, Will Hoge has joined the ranks of the most eagerly anticipated discs of the early Summer.  June 26 is the date for Tiny Little Movies.  And save some space on that list for XOXO, the Jayhawks' next full-length, gracing your turntable on July 10.  Here and now, it's your weekly ROUTES-cast:

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