Car Wheels On a Gravel Road (Deluxe Edition)

*Car Wheels on a Gravel Road* is the type of career-defining album that artists dream of creating. Immediately upon release it received rave reviews and upped Lucinda Williams’ artistic credibility to the first order. It isn’t hard to hear why. The 13 songs are perfectly polished gems, with haunting melodies, quotable, memorable lyrics, tight, precise production and Williams’ pointed pained phrasings and southern charm. This “deluxe edition” features three additional tracks: an alternate version of “Still I Long For Your Kiss” that appeared on *The Horse Whisperer* soundtrack, an early, sparse reading of “Out of Touch,” which appeared on her follow-up album *Essence*, and the 1920s blues “Down the Big Road Blues.” But the real draw here is album two: a live performance from July 11, 1998 at Penn’s Landing in Philadelphia for the World Café radio program, it shows Williams and her backing band in top form, spitting forth nine *Car Wheels* tracks alongside four others. Though often noted as a painstaking perfectionist in the studio, Williams delivers fresh performances that mine her material’s emotive power without sacrificing the alluring nuance of her best work.