Leather jacket: check. Dark eyeliner: check. Keds with white laces: check. Black and white photo of the artist cradling their guitar like a lover while gazing defiantly into the camera: check.

We’ll get to the music soon enough, but first, that cover. Lucinda Williams nails the iconography and attitude of rock in a way that can’t be faked; while her normal style is Americana that leans to the country-folk side of things, she’s also shown an affinity for the honky-tonk-styled blues-rock that she makes her primary focus here. There is nothing the least bit artificial or insincere about Stories From a Rock N Roll Heart; it’s clear that Lucinda Willians is a lifelong fan who means every word she sings on this album.

It must also be said—because good rock and roll is also honest rock and roll—that Lucinda Williams is no spring chicken, and shows little interest in disguising the mileage on her odometer. At 71, her voice has a more pronounced quaver and less precise pitch than it once did. You could choose to view these developments as flaws, or you could choose to adopt the same attitude she seems to have, and say “This is a genuine record, recorded by a genuine artist, who’s been around long enough not to take shit from anyone, and who ain’t gonna use no goddamned auto-tune.” Williams sings from the heart, giving everything she has to these songs, and this listener wouldn’t have it any other way.

Unsurprisingly for the woman Time magazine named “America’s best songwriter” back in 2002, the strongest thing about the songs found on this album is Williams’ lyrics, full of both celebrations of and ruminations on a hard life thoroughly lived.

Nostalgic anthem “Let’s Get The Band Back Together” kicks things off on an upbeat note as Reese Wynans of Double Trouble fame gives this nostalgic rocker a little Texas boogie strut and color with his Hammond organ and piano work. The track finds Williams singing “Playing Dylan and The Boss, man / We thought we were cool,” providing the perfect setup for successor “New York Comeback,” a pulsing, airy number that features The Boss himself and his wife Patti Scialfa on harmony vocals. The cool factor is simply undeniable.

“I’ve seen what happens when you stay too long” sings Williams on the hard-nosed “Last Call For The Truth.” “But I guess I never got the memo / I always have to hear the last song… Give me one more taste of my lost youth / And it’s last call for the truth.” Oof. Next up, “Jukebox” delivers a country-tinged ballad to loneliness, about a older person seeking solace at the neighborhood watering hole, sort of a honky-tonk Nighthawks.  

“Stolen Moments” captures that open-road romantic feel of a classic Springsteen or Petty tune, with a nice drive and push. And then Williams proceeds to demolish any doubts you may still be clinging to about this endeavor with “Rock N Roll Heart.” The opening verse feels almost cliché because she’s telling a familiar, iconic story using familiar, iconic language, but it all pays off at the chorus of this anthem about what rock’n’roll means to the people who make it. With Springsteen returning to deliver harmony vocals on said chorus, the song feels like nothing less than destiny.

After 2020’s furious Good Souls Better Angels, it’s no surprise to find Williams eviscerating the current state of the nation’s politics on the dark, rather Doors-ish “This Is Not My Town.” Here the somewhat haunted quality of her vocals only adds to the atmosphere as she chant/sings “They’re playing one against the other” before Margo Price adds her harmony vocals on the choruses.

The album does fade a bit in the final third, with the somber character sketch “Hum’s Liquor” and the hymn-like songwriter’s blues “Where The Song Will Find Me” leading into closer “Never Gonna Fade Away.” The latter’s title may suggest a full-throated rocker, but instead Williams delivers a stately mid-tempo number, more a steely resolve than a fiery declaration.

There’s a hint of boogie in the rhythm section on a number of these tracks that inevitably reminds me of Petty, who Williams would likely would acknowledge as a strong influence on the rock and roll side of her musical equation. How fitting, then, to discover later on in the liner notes that seven of these 10 tracks feature former Heartbreaker Steve Ferrone on drums.

Stories From A Rock N Roll Heart really only fulfills the promise made in its title for its first seven tracks, but within that span there are plenty of stirring moments to be found, and I’ll take 10 tracks of Lucinda Williams truth bombs over every auto-tuned ingenue in the LA area code, any day of the week.

Rating: B+

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