Everything's Broken Down

Four years after Lucinda Williams guested on Elvis Costello’s album The Delivery Man, EC returned the favor on her 2008 album, Little Honey. It’s another “song of wine and woe,” one that offers the opportunity to compare and contrast two equally affecting songwriting styles. 

Williams doesn’t traffic much in abstraction or metaphor. Her songs cut to the emotional chase. Here she’s fed up with a guy who ended up behind bars, but what’s more upsetting to her are the constant lies and half-truths he continues to peddle, even from jail. 

On “There’s a Story In Your Voice,” Costello and Williams swap verses and come together for harmony on the choruses; here, the verses are a dialogue, where EC is the bumbling doofus who thinks he can charm his way back into his lady’s heart, and LW is the long-suffering girlfriend who has had enough of this bullshit. Even their harmony is tainted by his lies; he sings that he’s been “crying jailhouse tears,” but after hearing about screwup upon screwup, do you really believe him? 

As for Lucinda Williams, what can you say? A brilliant songwriter, with a voice that cuts to the quick like a shard of broken glass cuts through exposed skin. Her Little Honey album shifts from country-rock to blues to gospel howl without pause. Through it all, that voice tells the truth, even when it’s easier to lie. Especially when it’s easier to lie. 

(Note: I swear on all that is holy, I did not cheat my random system of song selection to put these two Lucinda/Elvis duets so close together. It was simple country kismet.)