Lucinda Williams Returns With Enlightened Fury on Good Souls Better Angels

The deep-dive into darkness continues on “Big Black Train,” a metaphor for the fog of depression and anxiety that can roll in at the most inconvenient times and take over so many lives with no permission from its victims whatsoever—especially now. “I can hear it comin’ from miles away,” she sings of this “train.” “And I don’t wanna get on board.” She even travels beyond the “bottom” on one classic rock rager, “Down Past the Bottom,” where she sinks “lower and lower.” There’s more loneliness and grief on “Shadows & Doubts,” which feels especially pertinent for touring artists, but could apply to anyone suffering through these “dark new days”—one of many moments on this album that feels like a prediction of how 2020 would unfold. “Man Without a Soul” works best as a denouncement of the hate and stupidity that reeks from the Oval Office, but it could certainly be about any man in power who brings “nothing good to this world.” Lucinda Williams is unfearing, and she has absolutely no sympathy for evil-doers.

But this album is not a total downer. The best protest songs uphold some kind of optimism, and it seems Williams would agree with Sam Cooke that, despite all the wrongs that are infiltrating American society right now, a change is, in fact, “gonna come.” On the brooding sixth track, she vows to “pray the devil back to hell,” and on the much softer “When the Way Gets Dark,” she offers the encouragement, “Don’t give up / hang on tight / don’t be afraid.” She closes the album with a seven-minute prayer, a sure sign that not all hope is lost, singing, “Keep me in the hands of saints / Keep me with the good souls, with the better angels.” While so much of this album is steeped in anger, it just feels right that the title track is also the most joyful. Williams’ fury is the productive kind.

Good Souls Better Angels is like Williams’ other albums in that it’s not complicated—her songwriting has always benefited from plain-spoken poetry and blue-collar sensibilities. The stories on her 1998 landmark album Car Wheels on a Gravel Road occupied kitchens, diners and dusty paths, reveling in an imperfect past and the decidedly simple and relatable stories that have defined country music since its infancy. Her music has always been rooted in the bittersweet ways of the blues, and it has always been the music of a dedicated outlaw. But never before has Williams been this much of a daredevil, dead-set on stirring the pot until her arm gets tired and its contents burn and shrivel. Good Souls Better Angels is proof that even legends like Lucinda don’t just leave their best work behind them one day: They keep writing and making as long as they can, challenging people to listen to their newest music with the notion that it could be some of their best. Williams has certainly done some of her best handiwork with a blues-rock record that is so of-this-moment, it’d be crazy not to acknowledge it as one of the most important of the year so far.

Ellen Johnson is an associate music editor, writer, playlist maker, coffee drinker and pop culture enthusiast at Paste. She occasionally moonlights as a film fan on Letterboxd. You can find her yapping about all the things on Twitter @ellen_a_johnson.