Revisiting Lucinda Williams’ ‘Car Wheels on a Gravel Road’

Vehicle Wheels on a Gravel Road is undeniably Lucinda Williams’ most celebrated album, and for good reason: It really is the report that elevated her from relative obscurity and yrs of tunes business tough luck and released her into the realm of mainstream acclaim. It truly is also the record that showed the globe Williams is peerless in her expertise.

Produced on June 30, 1998, Automobile Wheels was certified gold and received the Grammy Award for Best Present-day People Album. Though this was Williams’ fifth album in nineteen several years, Motor vehicle Wheels was her first report ever to chart. Critics (who had been Williams’ principal viewers up right up until this place) recognized her inventive triumph right away. Rolling Stone’s Robert Christgau declared, “Lucinda Williams is much too superior for this earth.” It really is a statement that still rings real currently, 25 a long time later.

If Auto Wheels have an other-worldly soundscape, Williams’ notorious perfectionism is to thank. Remarkably, she used 6 a long time working on the document. Currently, that prolonged time period of generation has grow to be a little something of a legend. 

She 1st recorded the album with producer Gurf Morlix but then scrapped the task when it was approximately finish mainly because she was unsatisfied with her vocals. Morlix stepped down, and Williams started off over from scratch with Roy Bittan, Steve Earle, and Ray Kennedy. Around the future five decades, she went on to document again and once again until she observed perfection. 

Each and every of those people laborious several years compensated off: Williams had designed a bonafide Southern Gothic masterpiece. Tunes like “2 Kool 2 Be 4-Gotten,” “Concrete and Barbed Wire” and “Greenville” weren’t just some of Williams’ greatest do the job to date, but they have been a window into the wrenching and wretched soul of the modern American deep south. With the act of offering the globe these music, she also served delivery a new genre.

The capacity for present day listeners to hear artists like Jason Isbell, Margo Selling price, Tyler Childers and Brandi Carlile and without having hesitation identify them as “Americana” artists is probable mainly because of Williams and Car Wheels. At the time of its release, Automobile Wheels may perhaps have been challenging to categorize, but right now it can be seen as the gold regular of Americana albums.

For this, Car or truck Wheels officially pushed Williams into the canon of hallowed American musicians. In a 1997 aspect main up to the album’s launch, The New York Times in contrast Williams to Bob Dylan 2 times for both of those the qualities of her voice and her presents as a storyteller. 

It is a comparison that has trapped in the collective consciousness. In 2018, Pitchfork wrote, “Galvanized by Bob Dylan, Williams’ songwriting evoked his poetic ambition, Bruce Springsteen’s every single-persons, Joni Mitchell’s confessionalism.”

These are all significant compliments and very well-deserved at that. Even so, when Williams’ expertise is contextualized by how equivalent she is to Dylan or Springsteen, Christgau’s first observation feels even extra poignant: Lucinda Williams is way too fantastic for this environment. So fantastic that the globe has struggled to conceptualize her as the singular drive she is.

Listening to Vehicle Wheels on a Gravel Highway, it is really apparent that the only person’s poetic ambition Williams has at any time evoked is her have.

Lucinda Williams, Motor vehicle Wheels on a Gravel Street Track List:
1. “Suitable in Time”
2. “Auto Wheels on a Gravel Road”
3. “2 Kool 2 Be 4-Gotten”
4. “Drunken Angel”
5. “Concrete and Barbed Wire”
6. “Lake Charles”
7. “Can’t Let Go”
8. “I Missing It”
9. “Metal Firecracker”
10. “Greenville”
11. “Nevertheless I Extended for Your Kiss”
12. “Joy”
13. “Jackson”