Car Wheels on a Gravel Road

Aunque en Apple Music lo clasifican como rock, siento que es más country, género que no soporto. Ya en las últimas canciones estaba a punto de rendirme porque no podía escuchar más. No está mal si escuchas dos tres canciones, pero ni de chiste vuelvo a escuchar el álbum completo.

Just not for me

I’m just above a 5.

I didn’t know this album had THIS much acclaim going into it, what with all of the “best album of 1998” talk from critics as cited on Wikipedia. The instant contrast of that is the top review on the site calling it boring & generically written. The truth is a bit different, because that top review is right. The lyricism in the back half of the album trims down quite handily compared to the more vivid & lived-in experiences of the first half. It’s a notable difference. It’s an intentional difference. The back half of this album, starting from “Can’t Let Go” onwards, is her inability to consistently find and maintain the same sense of love she was able to find & mourn on the first half of the album. I mean, look at the first track; she’s so deeply in love that she can simulate sex down to every detail in a way that works. Her passion rings through to all aspects of her life in the first half, whether it’s the sights & sounds from the titular car wheels on a gravel road, or the memories of juke joints & murdered friends, culminating in “Lake Charles”, a wonderful tribute to her dead ex & how comfortable he felt in himself after finding his town & his people.

That’s why the back half of the album works as strongly as it does; it’s a pretty direct mirror of the first half, just from the perspective of someone who can’t recapture the same magic. “Can’t Let Go” shares the same sense of intimacy, but her clinginess to this relationship now reads as more desperate & much less effective to her mind. “I Lost It” tells it right as it is on the tin. The gravel road of the past becomes a touring bus on the road in “Metal Firecracker” where, instead of sharing her memories so openly, she’s now pleading to keep her passions a secret with a fling that popped as quickly as it sparked. “Greenville” onwards through the end of the album is her frustrations spilling out; instead of mourning the dead & trying to break down the barriers of concrete & barbed wire, she’s building walls back up & mourning her own dying passions. Hopefully, the time she does get to Jackson, she’ll have rediscovered it. The back half of the album works as a great mirror; the simpler lyrics are met with a greater intensity in the instrumentation & shakier, passionate vocals that keep them just as engaging despite their repetition. To say this album loses its touch in the back half is ignorant at best & stupid at worst.

That’s why I’m somewhere just above a 5. I just think it’s a great 52 minutes front to back. I think it’s definitely worth all of the acclaim it gets. I’m not that close to a 10 because there is some truth to the lack of extra lyrical depth biting at me just a little bit, but I wouldn’t dare call the final results generic. It’s a really strong album, I’m glad it’s on the list, and I think after all of this, I just want to give Lucinda a quick hug. If nothing else, I have some gravel roads I could drive down & listen to this album with, and that might just enhance it a bit more. Great stuff.

When country meets 90s alt-rock. Some jam-based tracks. A lot of the songs seem pretty similar to each other.

A pretty nice album. I enjoyed most of it. Toward the end, it started to get on my nerves a bit. Besides, you heard this sound quite often toward the end of the ’90s. In that sense, the album doesn’t seem to have been particularly influential. 3/5

No ha estado mal, al principio parecía que iba a ser mucho mejor, pero para mi gusto se ha desinflado un poco. Me guardo tres canciones de las primeras: Right in time, 2 kool 2 be 4-gotten y Drunken angel.

I'm so excited for this. It's been something that I have only recently gotten into so it's exciting to now really examine it.

Ok, so I get it. This album is good and important. But it's not my fave style of country. Still, I got mad respect for Lucinda

I'm not normally a country fan, but I kind of liked the mix of folk and country in this album (I read it referred to as alternative country in my research). The musical arrangements are simple and not cluttered, which allows Lucinda's voice to be high in the mix. Her voice is not super fantastic and show-offy, but it does justice to the lyrics. The album is more standard country after the first few songs, my favorite of which was "Car Wheels On A Gravel Road". My other personal highlights included "Right In Time" and "Drunken Angel".

Car Wheels On A Gravel Road was honestly a super nice surprise. This album having Texas blues in the styles section of this site is honestly so fitting because this is one of the most Texas albums i have ever heard which makes it odd that it wasn't actually recorded in Texas. The main thing i really liked about this album was how chill it was, it's honestly one really nice album to unwind and relax to after working an 8 and a half hour long shift at work which is what i did. Williams' vocals were really good here too with them just having that right amount of rasp to make it enjoyable. Not the best album but if you want to listen to some nice Texas sounding country music, there are worse ways to do it.
Best Song: Car Wheels On A Gravel Road
Worst Song: Drunken Angel

Nope, not doing this.

Well that sounded like car wheels on a gravel road...

Dollar Tree Sheryl Crow.

I really dig her distinct singing voice!
I feel like she should have a few more albums on this list but looks like the list is playing popularity favorites again.
The sound of the music here is solid.
It’s a nice sounding take on the country roots style.
Definitely way better than that pop-country crap that is unfathomably popular.
I haven’t heard this in a while but on this listen I do hear the Bob Dylan influence clearly now.
The recording is maybe a little too clean but I’m probably conditioned now from hearing so many great sounding albums from the ‘70s on this list.
She’s had an amazingly great output of material post-stroke so I’m pretty sure there’s a few more albums that should be on this list along with this one.

'The way you move, it's right in time / It's right in time w/ me'. To take this record into your heart, where it belongs, & resolve its genius, go ahead & return to PJ Harvey's Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea & you'll get a sense of what Williams is up to. Lucinda & Harvey are our masters of airtight clarity as well as the tangibles of a floating ether: listening to either genius effects the sense that everything, I mean everything, can be known & cared for, that in the final analysis, we can never be too transcendent to be realistic. Of course, Lucinda is a southern realist while PJ's a Brit seer, & Williams has the advantage of a strong country tradition, but I think you catch my drift. I yield to both to feel that I'm not just of this world but in it.

What a lovely album. I really enjoyed this vibe. It definitely had a 90's feel to it, but as a child of the 90's that was not unwelcome.

Not very fair for the site to generate this the day after blonde on blonde. Reading that this album took 6 years in the studio is mad but makes sense. The whole thing seems overly polished and a little cold.

I’ve listened to so much MJ Lenderman, Waxahatchee and Wednesday in the last year… feel like this influenced them all. Enjoyed it.

lots of imagery around competing textures: barbwire concrete, metal firecracker, rubber on gravel

Good find, I thought this album was really good... And I noticed that many people refer to it as country! So, yes, surprisingly (if this fits into the country genre!), I'm enjoying some country songs, who would have thought? :-D

Americana, folk, rock, and country all put in a blender and the results poured out over a book of poetry.