Conventional wisdom tells us Lucinda Williams put out the most searing and true album of her career in 1998 with “Car Wheels on a Gravel Road.”
Not true.
Great as “Car Wheels” may be, Williams issued an even more lacerating, beautiful and influential album 10 years earlier— her self-titled Rough Trade debut.
Proof lies in this reissue of “Lucinda Williams,” timed for its 25th (!) anniversary. Listening again proves it to be that rarest of beasts: a perfect work. There’s not a chord, lyric, beat or inflection that doesn’t pull at the heart or make it soar. More, the disc served as a bellwether for a huge movement — Americana, the catch-all term for the root styles that fall between country and rock.
Amazingly, it has been out of print for 10 years. To make up for that spectacular gaffe, this reissue bonds the original album’s 12 tracks with 20 others. Fourteen of the bonus cuts come from a show Williams did in the Netherlands in 1989. Six cull from other events. Eight of the previously unheard tracks repeat songs from the original album but, believe me, you’ll be happy to run through them again, each in a quirked-up version.
The set includes two of Williams’ hardest-rocking tracks. There’s “I Just Wanted to See You So Bad,” whose emphatic chorus keeps deepening the sense of want, and “Passionate Kisses,” one of the most resonant jangle-pop songs ever conceived. “Passionate Kisses” seems like the ultimate song of entitlement, with the narrator spelling out just what she deserves from love. But her overstatement just underscores the emotionally barren soul behind it.
“The Night’s Too Long” highlights Williams’ storytelling gifts. It’s a richly detailed tale of a waitress who leaves town in search of a lover “who wears a leather jacket and likes his living rough.”
The ballad “Am I Too Blue” sees its narrator examining a character flaw that may be fatal, while “Side of the Road” is one of the best songs ever written about long-term relationships. The narrator asks her lover to pretend to let her go, so she can know “the touch of my own skin/against the sun/against the wind.”
The set also has two versions of “Sundays,” a melodic marvel that hasn’t appeared on a formal Williams CD until now. Like everything here, it weds an ideal tune to words that ache with meaning and singing that quakes with need.
jfarber@nydailynews.com
