World Without Tears

Talk about biting the hand that feeds you! For 15 years now, Lucinda Williams has been cultivating a growing audience with a series of gentle singer-songwriter records, none of which could have prepared her audience for this astonishing leap into the unknown.

World Without Tears is a spiky, vibrant, sexy beast of a record. Williams and her acoustic guitar are still the centre point, except now she’s backed by a noisy rock ‘n’ roll trio. The record swoops confidently from style to style, the blues of opener ‘Fruits Of My Labour’, the Dylanesque word play of ‘Sweet Side’ and the ragged country rock of ‘Real Live Bleeding Fingers And Broken Guitar Strings’, all sitting naturally side by side.

The singer herself is in electric form, displaying a voice that ranges from a melodic southern drawl to snarling punk – the standout track ‘Those Three Days’ sees her abandoning almost all aspects of melody and rhythm in her desire to slam an uncaring lover. ‘Atonement’, meanwhile, sets out to damn the very Bible belt believers who probably made up a lot of her audience in the first place.

Yet despite – or maybe even because of – the cranked up guitars, the upfront sensuality (‘Righteously’ exudes a wanton sexuality) and occasional pot shots at the American dream, this is still a country record at heart. It just happens to be one that places in her in the company of the true maverick geniuses of the genre.