The new album from Lucinda Williams — Good Souls Better Angels (2020)– is a far cry from her 1992 album Sweet Old World. Of course, the world has changed a lot since 1992 and so has Williams. But her new album, veering at times more toward punk music and blues than country, still reflects her great talent.
Recorded in Nashville with Williams’s band Buick 6, the album Good Souls Better Angels is from a powerful singer and strong person asserting herself amidst a crazy world. In the opening blues track, Williams proclaims, “You Can’t Rule Me,” and you believe her.
Her energy comes through on such songs as “Wakin’ Up,” about an abusive relationship, and “Man Without a Soul” (“You bring nothing good to this world”) about Donald Trump.
But she also reveals softer moments in some of the highlights of the album, including “Big Black Train” and the closing track “Good Souls.”
Many reviewers love the new album. Pitchfork calls it an “unsparing new album” with “some of the heaviest, most inspiring music of [Williams’s] career.” Others have compared it unfavorably with her best work. AllMusic reports that Good Souls Better Angels is “full of fierce, engrossing music from a great band with a mesmerizing frontwoman, but as fine as that is, it comes from someone who is capable of better work.”
I’m still listening to the album more and more. And although at this moment I do not yet know if it will become my favorite Lucinda Williams album, it is the album for our current era. Williams captures the anger, insanity, and, yes, beauty, of our times in a powerful album. And I’m not sure you can ask for more than that.
What do you think of Good Souls Better Angels? Leave your two cents in the comments.
Lucinda Williams is tackling social and political issues in her upcoming album, Good Souls, Better Angels (2020). The first track released off the album is the song “Man Without a Soul.”
From the title, one may correctly surmise that the song is about the current occupant of the White House. In the song, she warns the president that somehow it will all come to an end. Williams sings, “You bring nothing good to this world, beyond a web of cheating and stealing/ You hide behind your wall of lies, but it’s coming down/ Yeah, it’s coming down.”
You may hear the track at Rolling Stone or check out a live performance of “Man Without a Soul” below.
Williams and her husband Tom Overby produced the album with Ray Kennedy. Good Souls, Better Angels will hit the Internet on April 24, 2020 through Highway 20/Thirty Tigers.
Matthew Ryan continues to be one of the few artists creating great music out of our strange historical moment, struggling to provide us with understanding, catharsis, faith, hope, and beauty out of unsettling times. Now, he is releasing a new EP, Fallen Ash & Embers. As Ryan explains on his website, the EP is “inspired by the moment we’re in, but not tied to. It’s more interested in who we’ll be after this fever breaks.”
Fallen Ash & Embers follows another three-song release earlier this year that featured “On Our Death Day.” Like many of us, Ryan is questioning the current state of affairs in the United States and around the world. And he is using his talents to create great music to let you know you are not alone in the battle to save our humanity and the earth. Ryan recommends listening to these songs with headphones, and that is good advice for capturing the music and the lyrics of this EP that is essential listening for our time.
“Are You the Matador?”
The first song on the EP asks the question “Are You the Matador?” The song came out of a poem Ryan wrote that he later matched to music written by Doug Lancio that Ryan describes as “Spanish noir.” Ryan explains that he offers the song of “inclusion” with “acknowledgement, affection, thanks and welcoming to Hispanic and Latino people, and their cultures.”
Ryan often writes of his love of Leonard Cohen, and the beautiful lyrics, as well as the sound of the song, reverberate like a lost Cohen masterpiece. But where is the question of the title directed?
Are you the matador? Or are you the bull? Are you the weapon, Or a tool? Or are you a third thing, Something like air, That’s felt and fluid and moving Like a water that wasn’t there?
The opening made me think of a question well-worth asking about our current president. While a listener might instead think of someone they know, I hear a question about whether our president has been the reason for the misfortunes of our country (i.e., the matador), or is he merely the result of darker forces that have controlled things (i.e., the darker side of politics)? Or is he and the hate for immigrants a “third thing” like “air” that has been present around us all along but we just didn’t see it?
It is an essential question of our time, and one not being addressed adequately. And that is why we need more artists to ask questions that need to be asked.
“Warm Lightning”
The other songs on the EP remind us what is at stake from the questions of the lead track. It is not just democracy or our government that is at risk, but everything that really matters, like our loved ones and the world.
“Warm Lightning” is a radiant love song that Ryan explains is “about the now and the room to still explore and grow while together.” It’s a deep and complex painting of mature love, and all of its depth makes my eyes water every time I hear it.
Ryan notes that the song was inspired by Elvis Presley’s haunting version of “Blue Moon.” I hear that connection in the ambient music of the song. But the new song reminded me more directly of one of my favorite Bruce Springsteen album tracks, “Dry Lightning,” from The Ghost of Tom Joad (1995).
The songs convey two sides of love. Both begin with a portrait of a part of the day with the singer getting dressed. Springsteen begins his song, “I threw my robe on in the morning / Watched the ring on the stove turn to red,/Stared hypnotized into a cup of coffee . . . .” In Ryan’s song, it is nighttime, and the singer is not alone: “I buttoned my shirt; She laid on her side; I leaned down to kiss her; She put her hand over her eyes.”
The similarity in the titles first made me connect these two memorable songs. Springsteen’s “Dry Lightning” is about a man who cannot lose the memory of a lost love. But the lightening in Ryan’s song is “warm,” as he reflects on a current true companion. Even though she asks him to “leave” in the opening stanza, you soon realize that it is not a request to never come back. The singer is just going for a ride in the dark.
And unlike Springsteen’s protagonist, Ryan’s subject is not lonely in the morning. The singer recounts how he enjoys the mornings when his lover is up before him and he can still smell her perfume. By contrast, it is a similar smell that instead haunts the brokenhearted in Springsteen’s song (“But you can’t lose your memory,/ And the sweet smell of your skin.”).
The tragedy, if there is one, of Ryan’s story is that time goes by so fast, and the aging singer laments that sixty — or six hundred — “years can go by in a minute.” But it is a warm lament, like the warm lightning of the title, as the singer reminds her, “Wherever you go/ I want to be near.”
“The Last Event”
The final song on the EP, “The Last Event,” ties together themes from other two tracks. Ryan calls the ballad, written by him and David Ricketts, “the centerpiece” of the EP. It is “The Last Event” that also features the lyrics that gives the EP its name, Fallen Ash & Embers.
“The Last Event” is a warning that reminds us what is at stake. We risk the world and all that we love. And in the story, we lose it all in “the last event” that we should have seen coming: “Don’t say it comes as any shock / Things just go and go and go until they stop.”
What causes the “last event”? Ryan doesn’t say, but one could easily hear the unheralded warnings about climate change as well as other stupidity in governments. In the tale, Ryan recounts how people “smiled and cheered” at people in “rented black sedans” while “Monsters crept behind tall buildings.” And we were not blameless ourselves, “We were so beautiful we forgot we were human.”
Even as we think things will never end, they “go and go until they stop.” But as the singer of “The Last Event” recounts the end, he is still thinking of those he loves and how they were something (even if they “weren’t too bright” about where things were leading).
Although the singer in “The Last Event” is telling us about the end that came step-by-step in ways that we should have seen, Matthew Ryan is trying to tell us something now before it is too late and the last event becomes “falling ash and embers.” As he also recognized in the previous song, “Warm Lightning,” time goes by fast.
After this post initially published, Ryan announced that he was adding a fourth song to this EP, “Avalanche of Stars.” This additional song features Kate York on lead, and as Ryan says, it is a “beautiful ending to this collection.”
The entire EP Fallen Ash & Embers is essential listening for anyone who hopes, dreams, and wonders about where we are, what matters, and where we are going. Ryan’s new EP does what the greatest music sometimes is able to accomplish in a timely and timeless way by making us question, think, feel, and even dare to hope.
Fallen Ash & Embers will be released October 4, 2019 and is available for pre-order (with immediate download of “Are You the Matador?”) through Bandcamp. Buy it and listen to it through over-the-ear headphones as Ryan recommends (and over and over again, as I recommend). Leave your two cents in the comments.
Matthew Ryan has released a new single, “On Our Death Day.” The song, in the form of a “maxi-single,” arrives now without an album because Ryan felt an urgency to release it. It’s a song about our national moment, timely yet timeless, trying to find some sanity and hope in spite of what is coming out of Washington.
In October 2016, Ryan put music to the pre-election mood with his instrumental album, Current Events. Part of the purpose of that album was to create a soundtrack for information overload and the troubles of the times. With these new singles, he wrestles with the the post-election situation through his lyrics.
On Our Death Day
Although “On Our Death Day” comes out of our current political moment, the song is not political in the sense of a call to arms or of being in the voice of an activist. Instead, the singer asks timeless questions. The voice comes from someone troubled by our world. And the person could be someone who voted for our current president, or not.
The singer asks these questions of someone named Mary. The context leads one to imagine the conversation taking place between a man and his beloved. Perhaps they are an older couple in Ryan’s home state of Pennsylvania. Maybe they are farmers in the Midwest, or they could be anywhere in the country. (Or one could find the singer’s appeal going to a more spiritual place in light of the woman’s name.)
There are no accusations here, and Ryan has called “On Our Death Day” a love song. The opening verse ponders how we got to this moment in our lives. The singer understands the unhappiness that brought the current occupant to the White House. When those in the city and in the country are hurting, they look for answers: “You’ll start looking where you hurt.”
There is understanding, not blame, for those who opened the door. But it is clear who is the target of the second verse.
Yet this darkness, this person, this situation, is not really as new to the world as one might think. This same darkness is “in every book ever written.”
It would be easy to find despair in this darkness. But the singer reassures us that when all hope is gone, “all that’s left is hope.” In the chorus, he asks Mary if it is too late or if they will still have each other. Maybe it is love that gets us through. “Will you be standing / Under a black and silver sky / By my side, / By the graves,/ On our death day?
The song’s title referring to “our death day” may lead one to expect a dark song. But Ryan explained to Chimesfreedom that “a death can also be the end of an idea.” In fact, he explained, the song is looking for “context and redemption, and above all, a way out.”
It is not surprising that Ryan feels a special connection to this song. Many artists have avoided the challenge of the current political situation, perhaps hoping for additional clarity with more time. Some, like Son Volt, have released an album trying to sort through current events. Others have found mostly rage. With the new single, Ryan felt compelled to dig deeper, seeking his way around to find hope and love as ways to lead all of us out of this mess.
And It’s Such a Drag
For the B-side to “On Our Death Day” Ryan reworked his song “And It’s Such a Drag.” The song originally appeared in a quieter form on his album In the Dusk of Everything (2012). On the new amped-up version, Ryan is joined by Doug Lancio (guitar), Aaron “The A-Train” Smith (drums), and Kelley Looney (bass). This group provides great energy to the song. We hope there might be an album with this lineup in the future.
Ryan explained that he included “And It’s Such a Drag” with “On Our Death Day” because the B-side is about “an intimate confrontation with a narcissist.” One should be troubled by how a song originally written about a broken relationship can work so well as a commentary on our president.
But it is the perfect B-side for “On Our Death Day.” While the A-side is about quiet redemption, the B-side’s rock sound lets out a little anger. Sometimes you need to vent before you can get around to peace and understanding.
In this context, I imagine “And It’s Such a Drag” being in the voice of a disillusioned Trump supporter, or really any American voter: “Who loves you/ More than me/ Who gave you/ All that he had.” Then, the realization that this president (lover) does not care: “And you talk about me/ Like I was just another one of your deals.” The more I listen to this song, the more I think it is about this moment right now, even though Ryan wrote it years ago. Crank it up loud.
A Leonard Cohen Cover Bonus Track
Finally, the digital version of Ryan’s “maxi-single” release includes a bonus song. Ryan covers Leonard Cohen’s song “Steer Your Way.” The tune originally appeared on Cohen’s haunting final album recorded while he was in declining health, You Want it Darker (2016). Ryan had recorded the song for a Cohen-tribute vinyl album after the 2016 election, Like a Drunk In A Midnight Choir. It is a nice addition here as a bonus track.
Cohen’s song, in the voice of one nearing the end of life, coaxes us to review our own choices and our lives. The singer advises, “Steer your heart past the Truth you believed in yesterday.” Again, I find in this song Ryan’s compassion for people who are open to growth and to changing their minds.
Ryan has disclosed that Cohen’s song helped steer him back toward hope. He adds that the lyrics to “Steer Your Way” say “so clearly what needs to be said right now.”
In releasing these three recordings together now, Ryan explained, “Each of us should do what we can to offer intelligence and beauty and conscience in contrast to this stormy weather.” With beauty, grace, contemplation, compassion, and poetry, Ryan has lived up to his end of the bargain.
Of course, those are just my impressions of the songs. You may find something different in them. To purchase “On Our Death Day” on vinyl with “And It’s Such a Drag” or as a digital maxi-single with the bonus Leonard Cohen song, head over to Matthew Ryan’s website or his Bandcamp page.
One ridiculous aspect about comments made by President Donald Trump regarding his preference for immigrants from Norway over immigrants from Haiti and some other African nations is the debate about his language. Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas and Senator David Perdue of Georgia, who attended the Oval Office meeting, defend the president by using a bit of linguistic legerdemain.
While reliable sources confirm that Trump referred to Haiti and other countries as “shithole countries,” Trump’s allies have raised an interesting defense. Cotton and Perdue supported Trump by denying the president said the word. But apparently the basis for their defense is that Trump actually said “shithouse countries.”
Others may debate whether it is more or less racist to have used one term over the other. But it is clear that politics is at a low level when you have elected Senators even making such an argument to suck up to this president.
The incident, however, probably is not a new low for politics. Just considering Cotton’s record, one sees a man whose loyalty to ideology often trumps traditional notions of national service. For example, during his first year in the Senate in 2015, Cotton organized other Senators to undermine President Barack Obama’s nuclear negotiations with Iran through a letter to the government of a foreign country.
Cotton also worked to prevent the confirmation of a highly qualified African-American woman to be the U.S. ambassador to the Bahamas because she was friends with President Obama. The nominee, Cassandra Butts, had a distinguished career when she was nominated for a position that needed to be filled.
After a hearing about Butts’s nomination in May 2014, Cotton put a hold on her confirmation. He later told her that he was doing it because he knew she had been friends with President Obama since law school. And he wanted to hurt the president. Butts spent the last 835 days of her life waiting for the confirmation before she died of acute leukemia.
“Cotton Fields”
For something nicer, when I think of rotten cotton, I go back to the classic song “Cotton Fields.”
Oh, when them cotton bolls get rotten, You can’t pick very much cotton In them old cotton fields back home.
Huddie Ledbetter, better known as Lead Belly, wrote “Cotton Fields.” He recorded it in 1940.
A number of famous artists have covered the song, including Odetta, Harry Belafonte, the Beach Boys, and Johnny Cash. But my favorite cover version is the one by Creedence Clearwater Revival.
The CCR version is the one I grew up listening to. It appeared on their 1969 album Willy and the Poor Boys.
“Cotton Fields” is a wonderful song that people still enjoy more than seventy-five years after it was first recorded. By contrast, seventy-five years from now, nobody will probably remember how a man named Cotton tried to ingratiate himself to a president based on a distinction between “shithole” and “shithouse.”
Photo of cotton fields via Creative Commons and Kimberly Vardeman. What is your favorite version of “Cotton Fields”? Leave your two cents in the comments.
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