lucinda williams – car wheels on a gravel road (1998)

With not a component out of place, CWOAGR unveiled the Southern world in which its singer loved and lived. The record was not made through the seamless beauty with which it arrived: it was hard-fought, re-thought, and endured. With a spiky purr, Lucinda spoke of life plainly and perfectly, while the colourful imagery she planted next to a direct realism manages to feel precisely as intimate. Only a spontaneous, zealous person could write like this; the poignance of her non-sequiturs is in their ability to mirror a life forged one step at a time. She just happens to be a musical perfectionist, too. 

30/30

A favourite: ‘Drunken Angel’