Live @ The Fillmore

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Few artists take the sort of emotional risks that Lucinda Williams does. Pouring her all into songs of hurt, need, and desire, she turns every live performance into an adventure, as the first concert of her career attests. Coproduced by Williams, Live at the Fillmore showcases her raw wound of a voice and the rough edges of her band in all their unvarnished glory, as the music cuts across conventional categories of country, blues, folk, rock (and rap) to strike a distinctly personal chord. Even the pacing is risky. Whereas most artists plan their sets to hit hardest at the beginning and end, Williams inverts the dynamic, sustaining a mood of reflective melancholy for extended stretches that open and close the album, while building to an explosive climax in the middle. With the selection dominated by recent material, the first eight numbers are like a sweet ache, as the wistful country of "Ventura" and "Reason to Cry" and the folkish minimalism of "Lonely Girls" explore the fringes of emotional fragility. Then Williams and band flex their musical muscles, shifting into the bluesier side of her artistry on "Change the Locks" and "Atonement," extending the desperate intensity of "Joy" over almost eight minutes, and offering homage to Neil Young's Crazy Horse on "Righteously" and "Essence." Backed by the barbed-wire guitar of Doug Pettit over the bare-s rhythms of bassist Taras Prodaniuk and drummer Jim Christie, Williams tells the crowd, "We got the mojo workin' tonight." --Don McLeese Recommended Lucinda Williams Albums Lucinda Williams Sweet Old World Car Wheels on a Gravel Road Essence World Without Tears Ramblin'