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. But there is only one Lucinda Williams, and on her 1998 Grammy-winning masterpiece Car Wheels on a Gravel Road, she demonstrates why she’s an unrivaled talent.
The Lake Charles, Louisiana native has a sprawling discography, kicking off in 1979 with Ramblin’ on My Mind and most recently with the acerbic Good Souls Better Angels, which makes selecting just one of her albums as the “best” a bit of a fool’s errand. However, Car Wheels on a Gravel Road stands out as a hallmark of hard-worn Americana, a Southern swirl of country, blues, folk, and rock ‘n’ roll.
It’s 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. Across 13 tracks, from the sexy “2 Kool 2 Be 4-Gotten” to 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. If Williams is Americana’s poet laureate, Car Wheels on a Gravel Road is a high watermark of the form. — Spencer Dukoff