Few artists would dare open an album - let alone a double set - with a spare song based on the words of their accomplished poet father ... especially when the worthy sentiment sounds like the old faux-philosophical hippie poster Desiderata.
But Lucinda Williams - decades into an acclaimed career, now on her own label and with a faithful following - can take that chance. Whether it's a good idea is another matter. Compassion certainly links back to the title track of her last album Blessed, but thereafter we are frequently dropped into indulgently familiar lyrical and musical territory where souls are bared, and Williams' increasingly lazy drawl can sound like a tedious trope.
The excellent, slurred West Memphis with Tony Joe White being himself on swamp guitar and harmonica is about the West Memphis Three, but Something This Wicked Way Comes, again with White, works a similar groove.
Many of these songs - East Side of Town, Cold Day In Hell, Stowaway in Your Heart - are lesser and uninteresting vehicles elevated by the band, but, as an office wag said, the guitarists sound like they are paid by the solo. To that we might add, Lucinda by the verse.
Much here could have been chopped and channelled into a taut single disc of country-soul.
