Car Wheels on a Gravel Road

Writing about Car Wheels on a Gravel Road feels like writing about the ocean: what can anyone say about this monumental object that hasn’t already been said? The title track should be etched into your brain since birth, “Can’t Let Go” should be playing in your head right now, forcing you to slap your thighs to its rickety percussion. That voice so easy to harmonize with and impossible to imitate precisely, anti-sentiment and back slapping ringing through the Cobain ode “Drunken Angel,” graffiti becomes a mantra for the album itself, “2 Kool 2 B-4-Gotten.” You know this record. You own maybe one or two copies of it on CD or tape. Go look for it. Study it. Lucinda Williams was given the gift of prophecy and, rather than keeping it a secret, welded together the DNA helix of modern alt folk and country with songs that bounce and thud like a car with bad shocks. You feel every bump.