Car Wheels on a Gravel Road |
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Released: June 30, 1998 Peak: 65 US, -- UK, -- CN, 69 AU Sales (in millions): 0.81 US, 0.06 UK, 0.87 world (includes US and UK) Genre: folk/country |
Tracks:Song title (date of single release, chart peaks) Click for codes to charts.
Total Running Time: 51:40 |
Rating: 4.323 out of 5.00 (average of 25 ratings)
Quotable:Car Wheels “stands out as a hallmark of hard-worn Americana, a Southern swirl of country, blues, folk, and rock ‘n’ roll.” – Consequence.netAwards:(Click on award to learn more).
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Lucinda Williams’ Early CareerSinger/songwriter and guitarist Lucinda Williams was born in 1953 in Louisiana. In 1978, she moved to Jackson, Mississippi to record her first album with Folkway Records. That album, 1979’s Ramblin’ on My Mind and 1980’s Happy Woman Blues, were recorded in a traditional country and blues style. Her self-titled third album took eight years but became celebrated as one of the pivotal records in the Americana movement. It was also her first to chart, reaching #39 on the Billboard album chart.Another four years passed before Lucinda released Sweet Old World, another album that failed to chart. She then took six years before releasing Car Wheels on a Gravel Road. It became the biggest seller of her career, reaching gold status, and also won a Grammy for Best Contemporary Folk Album. Worth the WaitThe album took a lot of time for a variety of reasons, namely Lucinda’s “meticulous perfectionism,” AM “scrapped original recordings,” PM “conflicts in the studio,” PM and label difficulties. AM She signed to Rick Rubin’s American label in 1994. Gurf Morlix, who had worked with Williams since the late ‘80s, was set to produce. When Lucinda decided she wasn’t satisfied with the results, she moved to Nashville and started over with Steve Earle. Then she thought the results were too polished and went to Los Angeles and worked with E Street Band member Roy Bittan. TBBy the time she handed the tapes over to Rubin for mixing in 1997, he was selling American Recordings to Mercury. That meant Williams had to renegotiate her deal with a new label. TB The result was an album that asks the listener to take time to absorb it. It is “one of those multi-layered albums that opens up with repeated exposure.” RD The album received “pretty much unanimous critical praise” TB and topped many year-end album polls. TB ProductionCar Wheels “is far and away her most produced album to date, which is something of a mixed blessing. Its surfaces are clean and contemporary, with something in the timbres of the instruments (especially the drums) sounding extremely typical of a late-'90s major-label roots-rock album." AM It means “her sound is punchier and livelier.” AM“The production also throws Williams’ idiosyncratic voice into sharp relief, to the point where it's noticeably separate from the band. As a result, every inflection and slight tonal alteration is captured.” AM The first thing to notice is “her voice, which is wistful, defiant, and wan. Then there are the remarkable arrangements in a variety of American roots idioms.” RD “But most provocative ar the stories Williams tells – she has a winding way of reaching climaxes that are…crushingly sad.” RD The Material and Potential Themes“It’s ultimately the material that matters, and Williams’ songwriting is as captivating as ever." AM "These up-from-Dixie tunes flow so easily, like conversations over a low backyard fence, that it’s hard to believe Williams spent six years obsessing over each chord and syllable." TL"Intentionally or not, the album's common thread seems to be its strongly grounded sense of place – specifically, the Deep South, conveyed through images and numerous references to specific towns. Many songs are set, in some way, in the middle or aftermath of not-quite-resolved love affairs, as Williams meditates on the complexities of human passion. Even her simplest songs have more going on under the surface than their poetic structures might indicate." AM The Album’s Influence“There have been no shortage of Lucinda Williams imitators over the years – artists hoping to nick even an ounce of her grit, grace, and gumption and make it their own.” CQ Car Wheels “laid the roadmap for future generations of assured female singer-songwriters like Waxahatchee’s Katie Crutchfield and Margo Price to write boldly about their interior lives while discarding previously established genre constraints.” PMBut there is only one Lucinda Williams, and on Car Wheels on a Gravel Road, she demonstrates why she’s an unrivaled talent.” CQ She “was creating something entirely new; a singular blend of country, folk, blues and rock.” PM Rolling Stone called it an “alt-country masterwork.” 500 It “stands out as a hallmark of hard-worn Americana, a Southern swirl of country, blues, folk, and rock ‘n’ roll.” CQ Lucinda “might not be the most prolific songwriter of the ‘90s, she’s certainly one of the most brilliant.” AM It “was an enduring singer-songwriter classic; a highly melodic, earthy, lived-in set of tunes that spoke to life on the road, desire, disconnect and the terror and ecstasy of love.” PM Consequence.net’s Spencer Dukoff calls her “Americana’s poet laureate” CQ and says “Car Wheels on a Gravel Road is a high watermark of the form.” CQ The SongsThis is “a riff-laden record with a laundry list of lyrics tailor-made for tattooing on your body, doubling as a roadmap to the soul of a complicated nation.” CQ “The sexy 2 Kool 2 Be 4-Gotten” CQ “seems at first to be a disjointed string of images from a tavern, and only in the final verse does Williams describe the moment of loss that brought her to this place.” RDThen there’s “the middle-fingers-up kiss-off of Joy, you learn a few things about the record’s central narrator, but there’s one lesson that stands out in particular: You don’t fuck with Lucinda Williams.” CQ “The title track is one of Williams’ best: Over guitars that owe more to the Stones than to the Opry, she tells a story about the rootlessness of American life.” 500 Throughout the album “Williams rocks hard enough to give these troubled songs both dignity and a feeling of release.” 500 "On Can’t Let Go [and] I Lost It she starts with evocative nouns and everyday thoughts…and dramatizes them with indelible country and rock guitar hooks to create a sense of the modern rural South as a place that's sometimes sad, but always seductive.” TL “Can’t Let Go” garnered a Grammy nomination for Best Female Rock Vocal Performance.
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First posted 1/26/2011; last updated 12/8/2024. |
