In late 2020, a stroke impaired the motor skills of Louisiana-born Americana pioneer Lucinda Williams to the extent that it robbed her of her ability to play the guitar. Such is the regard in which she is held, an A-list cast (Bruce Springsteen, Patti Scialfa, Angel Olsen) has come forward to help out on Stories from a Rock N Roll Heart. With that intervention comes the risk of her 15th studio album feeling more like a tribute to Williams than a continuation of her garlanded solo career in its own right.
The more collaborative approach works, however, from the rousing barroom rockers This Is Not My Town and Rock N Roll Heart to the divine Jukebox, a country ballad hymning the redemptive power of music (“I know how to ease my lonely heart/ With Patsy Cline and Muddy Waters”). The desperately sad Hum’s Liquor, meanwhile, is dedicated to the late Bob Stinson (and features his half-brother and Replacements bandmate, Tommy, on backing vocals) and is as bleak a depiction of alcoholism as the Replacements’ own Here Comes a Regular. It’s a relief to find Williams as thought-provoking and moving as ever.
