Lucinda Williams returns at the age of 72 with another state of the nation critique, The World’s Gone Wrong.

I’ve been a fan of Lucinda Williams ever since her first recordings of old blues, folk and country covers back in the late Seventies.

But it’s her own songwriting where she displays the depth of her talent, evoking a mythical America of smoky bars, cowboy boots and pick-up trucks in dusty desert one-horse towns. 

She has a way with words inherited from her father, a poet and literary professor, inspiration from their southern roots in Louisiana and Mississippi, and a gift for a tune that’s all her own.

Then there’s her voice: a world-weary rasp that’s become wearier and raspier over the years, adding new layers of character to her vignettes of resilient women surviving hardscrabble lives of love and loss.

As much short stories as songs, in another life, she might have been a writer – a female Raymond Carver or (fellow musician) Willie Vlautin – but I’m grateful that, like a female Bob Dylan or Townes Van Zandt, she chooses to tell her stories with guitars.

What’s more, she’s not afraid to speak out about current affairs in no uncertain terms: five years ago she excoriated Trump in a song called Man Without A Soul, and her new album has the apt title World’s Gone Wrong.

The title track is like a picture postcard of the state of the nation today, with lyrics that bite hard and a deep well of compassion at its heart.