Song of the Day #287: ‘Sidewalks of the City’ – Lucinda Williams

sweetoldworldWilliams waited four years before releasing her next album, 1992’s Sweet Old World. It’s similar in sound to her self-titled album, though it’s thematically much darker.

The album’s strongest stretch is a three-song span toward the middle, stating with the aching title track, directed at a friend lost to suicide (“See what you lost when you left this world, this sweet old world”). Two tracks later comes ‘Pineola,’ a southern rock jam, spiked with violin, chronicling that loss and the funeral that followed (“I saw his mama, she was standin’ there / His sister, she was there too / I saw them look at us standin’ around the grave / And not a soul they knew”).

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