Lucinda Williams Sings The Beatles at Abbey Road

Lucinda Williams has a voice that some love and some hate. I love it. The songs of course are as good as you would expect from the Beatles. Would I recommend this album to Beatles fans? Perhaps not, Would I recommend it Lucinda Williams fans, Definitely!

I have enjoyed all Lucinda CD by artists that have inspired her , this has some tracks that work better than others but it is hard to cover Beatle songs and find a new way of working them .

The media could not be loaded. I was there for every one of the originals and I have felt emotions today that I have never felt before. absolutely brilliant Lucinda!

EXCELLENT

For her seventh jukebox release Lucinda Williams has drawn on the Beatles back catalogue. Always difficult to cover, the Beatles early songs are too well known and anything that deviates by as much as a single note from the well-worn overly-familiar original is too often regarded as sacrilegious and derided; while the later songs from their catalogue always seem to me to be a bit hit and miss, sometimes silly, sometimes unfinished, sometimes over-worked (but this is from a man who firmly favours the Stones in the Beatles versus Stones argument). So any set of Beatles covers is always going to be difficult and it's perhaps not surprising that Williams has largely played it safe choosing a few of the less familiar titles. But with the Beatles there's never getting far away from the hits and Williams has rightly in my opinion only drawn on one of the early mop-top pre-course correcting "Rubber Soul" album hits while much of the rest of the album draws on their post-modernist period of "The Beatles, aka The White Album", "Abbey Road" and "Let It Be". But even still there are some obvious choices of the oft-covered classics here, "Something" and "Let It Be" being the most notable, but perhaps what is more notable is Williams' exclusion of "Yesterday", "Hey Jude" and to a lesser extent perhaps "Blackbird"."Sings The Beatles" opens with a faithful rendition of "Don't Let Me Down", it's ok but perhaps a little too upbeat for Williams' voice which these days is better suited to ballads, the blues or hard-rockers not mid-tempo schmaltz. Second track "I'm Looking Through You" from the "Rubber Soul" album is another mid-tempo rocker, it's not a track I'm familiar with but given the hooks I assume it's a faithful rendition and it's another that I'm not sure works for Williams. Funnily enough Williams' choice of "Can't Buy Me Live" is brave and her rendition actually rather good even if faithful to the original but at least this is a song that has teeth and that suits Williams. "Rain", the B-side of the "Paperback Writer" is another that I'm not familiar with, it's not a strong song (at least in this company) but it just about works for Williams.The fifth track here is the obvious "While My Guitar Gently Weeps", this is a song I could listen to all day and I've never heard a bad cover, I have though heard better (Peter Frampton's version on his 2003 "Now" album comes to mind) and while Williams and her band make a good fist of this classic I can't help wondering what Williams former sideman Stuart Mathis might have made of it. Even more obvious territory follows with a beautiful rendition of "Let It Be" which with its sparse arrangement and overwrought pathos suits Williams' voice down to the ground. As does the bluesy "Yer Blues" from the "White Album" which is probably my favourite track in this set. Eighth track "I've Got A Feeling" from the "Let It Be" album is another that works well for Williams while "I'm So Tired" that follows is a rubbish song, a filler from the bloated "White Album" that Williams doesn't improve, but it's a non-starter as it's beyond help anyway and I'll be skipping it in the future.I suppose any set of Beatles of covers was always going to include George Harrison's masterpiece "Something", I'm just not sure that Williams has the chops for it, Shirley Bassey yes, Elvis Presley yes, Frank Sinatra yes, Lucinda Williams no. "With A Little Help From My Friends" is much better with Williams sounding not unlike Joe Cocker and has a ripping solo from (I assume) Doug Pettibone maybe that's why it works. Final track, washed in pedal steel, "The Long and Winding Road" is another that works for Williams and is little short of a beautiful way to finish.So, like the Beatles' later works on which Williams draws heavily this is a bit hit and miss. I generally love Williams' work, but as I wrote in the introduction covering the Beatles catalogue was always going to be a big ask. Were there other songs that might have worked better for Williams, very probably the Beatles have a rich canon on which to draw, although in my opinion some of the Lennon and McCartney solo songs that followed the Beatles demise might have been more suited to Williams growling drawl, McCartney's "Jet" or "Live and Let Die" or Lennon's "Imagine", albeit too obvious, or perhaps even "Watching the Wheels Go Round". I'm sorry but I can't see this album coming off the shelf as often as say "Bob's Back Pages" or "You Are Cordially Invited" (but then I'm biased) and on the basis of seven or eight thumbs-ups it's not good enough for four stars. I do hope this isn't the last of Williams' Lu's "Jukebox" releases, it would be a sad way to finish what has hitherto been a superb series, and I would love to hear what she would make of a set of Cohen or Springsteen covers.

Part of her Lou’sJukebox series ,some of her interpretations succeed but others should have been left alone .None of them improve on the originals. Not a CD that bears to many repeat listening ,I’m afraid.Certainly not one of her best .

I was looking forward to hearing this having heard some songs played on the BBC World Service.What a disappointment. Some very wobbly monotone vocals along with some poorly performed/mixed guitar playing made this an experience I didn't really want to have. My wife and I turned it off after the third song as we couldn't listen to it any more. Such a shame as I was looking forward to hearing music from an artist I hadn't heard of before. I have returned the record.