Track Listing

1. Right In Time
2. Car Wheels On A Gravel Road
3. 2 Kool 2 Be 4-Gotten
4. Drunken Angel
5. Concrete And Barbed Wire
6. Lake Charles
7. Can't Let Go
8. I Lost It
9. Metal Firecracker
10. Greenville
11. Still I Long For Your Kiss
12. Joy
13. Jackson

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2282 in Music
• Released on: 2000-12-15
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: .21 pounds
• Running time: 52 minutes

Amazon.co.uk Review
Lucinda Williams makes this whole music thing seem so simple: Write in plain language about the people and places that crowd your memory; add subtle flavors of a mandolin here, a Dobro there, perhaps an accordion or slide guitar; above all, sing as honestly and naturally as you can. Of course, it took her six years to achieve this simplicity, an amazing achievement considering the number of knobs that were turned. Her exquisite voice moans and groans and slips and slides--she delivers a polished tone in a coarse manner. On the superb "Concrete and Barbed Wire", soft acoustic guitars are punctuated by electric slide, accordion, mandolin, and Steve Earle's harmony. Williams's deeply personal stories are matched with bluesy rumbles, raunchy grooves, and plaintive whispers. The entire Deep South is reduced to a sleepy small town filled with ex-lovers, dive bars, and endless gravel roads. --Marc Greilsamer

CD Description
Williams's fans waited a long six years for this album, as Lucinda went through music business hassles and a revolving door of producers. The reward for their patience is an albumfull of rootsy, heartfelt observations that alternately rock and mourn. CAR WHEELS is full of songs about loss and longing, like "Metal Firecracker", "Drunken Angel" and "I Lost It", but even when she's bemoaning her own lack of happiness on the bluesy "Joy", she lets loose with so much passion that it seems inevitable she'll find her emotional centre again.
Produced largely by Steve Earle, CAR WHEELS is immersedin that late-'90s alt-country sound, full of slide guitar, accordion, dobro and other Americana touches. It's a tributeto Williams's unique artistic vision that she distinguishesherself from the No Depression crowd by virtue of her idiosyncratic songwriting. Full of lust, sadness and the occasional glimmer of hope, CAR WHEELS is one small step for LucindaWilliams and one giant leap for those tuned into her wavelength.

Customer Reviews

Six years of effort, fifty minutes of pleasure
This was the album that convinced me that Lucinda Williams belongs in a different class to a lot of the American South's country scene. As a rough guide to the world that Car Wheels... inhabits, the range of material veers from rock to blues, acoustic to electric, but never loses the exquisite musical feel that Williams clearly possesses in spades.

A good album is one which has songs you like on the first listen, and songs that you take a while to warm to, but once you do they won't leave your head. This album is a classic example - the more immediate rock tunes (I Think I Lost It, Right In Time, Joy) burn brightly and fade, while the songs that are initially slower to sparkle (All The Way To Jackson, Greenville, Metal Firecracker) eventually work their way into your head until you find yourself humming them while wandering round the supermarket. With the exception of Concrete And Barbed Wire, which is a personal no-go area, there isn't a song on this album which is out of place.

Unlike some female singers who try too hard to sound sexy, Williams' vocal fragility is endearing, not cloying - and as her latest album ,Essence, shows, she can do the 'torch songs and ballads' circuit as well as anyone. But this is Lucinda Williams with a band, some simple songs, a perfect production job (why can't Steve Earle produce his own albums this well?), and a confident swagger that suggests even while she was recording this, she knew it would turn out to be a wonderful album.

The Best Album of the American South.
The American South. Home of back water hicks, swamps, latent racism and the setting for James Lee Burke novels. Well yes it is, but there is someone else who will now forever be connected with it - Luicinda Williams.

CAR WHEELS ON A GRAVEL ROAD is THE Southern album to own. The landscape, sounds and smells of the Deep South inhabit and give life to this album. So when Luicinda Williams sings "Sittin in the kitchen, a house in Macon, Loretta singing on the radio, smells of coffee, eggs and bacon - car wheels on a gravel road". You know where you are. Her voice is the key. It drips with Southern sexuality. And her timing is perfect. Best Songs? CAR WHEELS ON A GRAVEL ROAD, with Buddy Millar plucking his mando guitar, is nostalgic but never sickly. Also, the up tempo METAL FIRECRACKER and the self-affirming JOY stand out. But there is not really a bum track on here. The album contains some of the most pleasing, flowing music I have heard for years.

This record makes me want to go to Southern America. And while I save up the pennies, CAR WHEELS ON A GRAVEL ROAD will have to suffice.

The Deep South, live in your living room or car
Not much is known about Lucinda Williams, except that she has been a profound influence on other country-rock performers, such as Mary Chapin Carpenter, and is admired by many of her contemporaries.

She really does have an almost unique voice; while it can sound quite abrasive at times, it reaches into your soul, especially during the more melancholy moments.

'Car Wheels On A Gravel Road' is a rock album, a country album, and a folk album, and is an even more enjoyable concept than you might imagine. It's a wonderful 'driving' album; I'd say it was almost essential in the car, particularly in summer. For poetry fans, look no further than the lyrics here; Williams is a storyteller too, and it brings a whole new world to life. This makes it a true folk album - by the end you'll feel like you know these characters.

'Lake Charles' takes you to, well, Lake Charles, Louisiana, Williams' home town. On 'Drunken Angel' you can picture that 'derelict in your duct tape shoes'. After hearing 'Greenville', with a wonderful harmony vocal by Emmylou Harris, you will want to go there, along with the beau Williams is trying to extricate from her memory.

Amongst all the pain and anguish - and there is plenty - there is even humour; 'I think I lost it, let me know if you come across it, let me know if I let it fall along a back road somewhere' goes the chorus, proving that the human spirit will always rise again.

This is a must have for any serious music fan and aficionado. One final warning; once this album is in your blood, it will NEVER leave...