Lucinda Williams, Down Where the Spirit Meets the Bone

The southern renegade with an ear for haunting melody, an eye for painful detail and a voice of bruised experience delivers again with this 20-track helping of sharp-edged rock'n'roll, cut with bluesy phrasing, dirty country and a soulful twist. The title is drawn from Compassion, a poem by Williams's father, Miller Williams, which she has set to the kind of forlorn melody that adorns much of her work. This plea for understanding is then challenged by what follows, a snarling litany of public wrongs and private bad experiences, chronicled in livid phrases and cutting licks, as on the bitter Cold Day in Hell. Balance, however, is struck by the likes of When I Look at the World, in which solace is found in natural beauty. The lesson is clear: life might not be fair, but it's all we've got. lucindawilliams.com