Lucinda Williams' s new album, "West," is an alt-country ex orcism, a collection of bluesy chants and rootsy incantations meant to vanquish the artist's grief at her mother's death and rage at one more love gone wrong. Williams had come unmoored, and most of the songs follow suit: They're heavy, banal, drifting things that left this listener wishing that Williams had waited to reclaim her heart -- and her poetry and her melodies -- before putting out another album.
The first third of Williams' s concert Saturday at the Orpheum was as slow-moving and dreary as her new album, although only five tracks from "West" were included in her nearly two-hour set. The singer seemed to be reading from a script. In fact she was reading from lyric sheets on a music stand, and glancing down after every phrase seriously diminished her ability to either connect with the audience or build any kind of flow into her delivery. Still, Williams' s voice sounded glorious: bigger and warmer and clearer than the ragged demo vocals she opted to keep on the final mixes for "West" in the name of emotional authenticity.
