Lucinda Williams – “Man Without A Soul”

Lucinda Williams – “Man Without A Soul”

Lucinda Williams has announced a new album, Good Souls Better Angels, the follow-up to 2017’s Sweet Old World rerecording This Sweet Old World and her first full-length of new material since 2016’s The Ghosts Of Highway 20. Williams co-wrote many of the LP’s songs with her husband, Tom Overby, and they co-produced it with Ray Kennedy, who last worked with Williams on her 1998 breakout Car Wheels On A Gravel Road.

On Good Souls Better Angels, Williams eschews personal narrative-based songwriting in favor of songs that address wider cultural and political issues: domestic abuse, the 24-hour news cycle, the dangers of social media, depression, and Donald Trump. Although he’s never named directly, the president is the unmistakable subject of the album’s lead single “Man Without A Soul,” which premiered today on Rolling Stone.

“You bring nothing good to this world, beyond a web of cheating and stealing/ You hide behind your wall of lies, but it’s coming down/yeah, it’s coming down,” Williams drawls over droning bluesy guitars on “Man Without A Soul.” “You can only guess who that might be about,” she told the audience after performing it aboard the fifth annual Outlaw Country Cruise last week. Listen to “Man Without A Soul” below.

Good Souls Better Angels is out 4/24 via Highway 20/Thirty Tigers.

more from New Music