WHEN Lucinda Williams was a teenager growing up in Lake Charles, Louisiana in the mid-1960s the music of Bob Dylan's anti-war folk period ignited something in her mind.
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Songs like Masters Of War, Blowin' The Wind and Times They Are A-Changin' spoke to her on a different wave-length.
Later it was the ferocious intensity of garage punk bands like Iggy & The Stooges and their buzz-saw guitars that captured her imagination.
While Dylan and The Stooges operated at contrasting ends of the musical spectrum, the common denominator which appealed to Williams was rebellion. The music and lyrics elicited a reaction - be it positive or negative.
That's what Williams craved from her latest album Good Souls Better Angels; and that's exactly what the legendary Americana singer-songwriter received.
With tracks like Bad News Blues and Man Without A Soul, it's an angry and bleak encapsulation of the modern US, torn and divided under combative president Donald Trump.
Good Souls Better Angels has attracted some of the best reviews the 67-year-old has received since her landmark 1998 album Car Wheels On A Gravel Road and created more buzz than her contemporaries could hope to achieve in 2020.
However, the album and the Trump-inspired Man Without A Soul with lyrics like "You bring nothing good to this world/ Beyond a web of cheating and stealing/ You hide behind your wall of lies", has divided her heartland fan base.
"It's what rock'n'roll is about really," Williams says from her home in East Nashville this week. "It's supposed to be about rebellion.
"I think people seemed to have forgotten that because they're all like, '[the album] it's so angry'.
"Yeah but remember, every generation has had it's type of music like that. I guess it went away a little bit in the '80s and '90s. The punk movement was political and reggae music with the politics of Jamaica.
"The '60s when I was a teenager, it was all the anti-war stuff and civil rights stuff and that was mostly folk music like Bob Dylan and Joan Baez."
While Williams and her husband and manager Tom Overby wrote the songs during her 20th anniversary Car Wheels On A Gravel Road tour in 2018, the album's darkness seems perfectly suited to the present coronavirus pandemic.
Williams hasn't left her house for two months as COVID-19 has swept around the US, infecting 1.2 million people and killing 72,000, leaving the western superpower as the worst-affected country.
And like many people, Williams has watched on in anger at Trump's handling of the pandemic, which has ranged from initially underestimating its danger to suggesting scientifically-untested treatment like anti-malaria medicine and injecting disinfectant as possible remedies.
"I can only speak from the experience over here," she says. "The person who is trying to run this country is completely unsuited and not capable of doing anything the right way.
"It's just every day there's something wrong."
Williams says Trump is "just an idiot" and she holds grave fears what will happen as several states in the US attempt to reopen businesses while the virus is still heavily present in the community.
Despite believing any plan to reopen the US economy is premature, Williams can understand the desperation of people needing a swift return to normality.
"Everyone is freaking out because they don't have any money coming in," she says. "I'm luckier than most. It's easier if you're self-employed. I'm not working at a job nine to five and nobody else is paying me, so we have something else to fall back on. We're not struggling, but it's hard for a lot of other people, whose income is gone."
Across Williams' 40-year career she has straddled southern America's great musical genres of country, blues and rock'n'roll.
For the first half of her career she existed only in the alt-country underground, best known for her 1988 pop-rock hit Passionate Kisses.
The 1998 album Car Wheels On A Gravel Road changed everything. The record is considered one of the greatest Americana albums ever written. Tracks like Drunken Angel, Joy and Can't Let Go are classics and the Grammys gave the then 45-year-old long overdue recognition by awarding Williams Best Contemporary Album.
Since then Williams has continued to release a steady stream of records to maintain her status among the top echelon of alt-country songwriters.
On Good Souls Better Angels it feels like some of the Car Wheels On A Gravel Road magic has driven home.
Bone Of Contention roars with the similar roadhouse blues heard on Joy while Big Black Train and Wakin' Up are frightfully vulnerable.
The latter details Williams' own experience of domestic violence in a former relationship, when she spits, "He pulled the kitchen chair out from under me/ He pulled my hair and then he pissed on me/ Next thing, I swear, he wants a kiss on me."
It didn't hurt that Ray Kennedy returned to co-produce the album with Williams and Overby. It's the first time he's collaborated with Williams since Car Wheels On A Gravel Road.
"Ray was just getting these amazing sounds in the studio," she says. "He has a lot of vintage guitars and amplifiers. You walk in and all these guitars are hanging from the walls.
"On most of the songs I was playing 1950s or '60s guitars going through a vintage amplifier, so that gave it a particular sound too.
"Everything just came together, it's like being in the right place at the right time."
Good Souls Better Angels is out now.
Josh Leeson
Josh Leeson is an entertainment and features journalist, specialising in music, at the Newcastle Herald. He first joined the masthead in 2008 after stints at the Namoi Valley Independent and Port Stephens Examiner and has previously covered sport including the Asian Cup, A-League, Surfest, cricket and rugby league.
Josh Leeson is an entertainment and features journalist, specialising in music, at the Newcastle Herald. He first joined the masthead in 2008 after stints at the Namoi Valley Independent and Port Stephens Examiner and has previously covered sport including the Asian Cup, A-League, Surfest, cricket and rugby league.
