- Record Label: Highway 20 Records
- Release Date: Feb 5, 2016
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Jan 22, 2016[Lucinda Williams is] producing enough quality material to follow last year’s double-album Down Where the Spirit Meets the Bone with another double-album of equivalent potency. The songs on The Ghosts of Highway 20 have the unerring ring of truth about them, shining glimmers of light into dark and unpalatable corners of life.
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Feb 5, 2016Adult work, Ghosts hits the gut, the soul and the grey matter.
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Feb 3, 2016It’s defiantly, proudly, and gorgeously organic, in a different universe from today’s processed digital pop.
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Jan 26, 2016The Ghosts of Highway 20 is otherwise characterized by its consistency, but what really sets it apart from Williams's previous album is its sense of emotional balance.
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MagnetFeb 12, 2016Williams’ themes here aren’t new for her—love lost and found, mortality, the struggle to get right with God. But thanks to Frisell especially, the settings for Williams’ cracked, world-weary voice and vivid songwriting are indeed new. [No. 128, p.60]
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Mar 2, 2016It’s hardly an easy listen, but it’s a compelling one just the same. And if it’s not exactly a conclusive journey, it’s still one worth traveling all the same.
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Feb 10, 2016Williams gives her songs more room to breathe than ever before, opening up vast, cinematic visions of the highway and land that inspired them.
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Feb 5, 2016After releasing one of the best and boldest albums of her career with Down Where the Spirit Meets the Bone, Williams goes from strength to strength with The Ghosts of Highway 20.
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Q MagazineFeb 4, 2016In its elegiac tone, its gauzy production and its sense of impending finality, The Ghosts is Williams' Time Out Of Mind, the album on which Bob Dylan pondered his own mortality. [Mar 2016, p.117]
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Feb 3, 2016Yeah, it's literary; yeah, it's the polar opposite of cosmetic-surgery pop. As such, it's not for everyone. But its jazzy rawness represents a high point of emotional craft in a career defined by it.
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Feb 3, 2016Nearly forty years in, Williams, 63, is at a place where some are likely contemplating the mortality of her career, too. But on The Ghosts of Highway 20, she’s never sounded more alive.
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Feb 1, 2016Listening to the 34 songs of Down Where the Spirit Meets the Bone and The Ghosts of Highway 20 in sequence feels less like a chore than a long trip led by an expert navigator with good stories to share.
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UncutJan 22, 2016The Ghosts Of Highway 20 is vast, thoughtful and profound. [Feb 2016, p.81]
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Jan 22, 2016There are stories of religion, guilt and loss, matched against a bittersweet, adult love song, Close the Door on Love, and a bleak treatment of Bruce Springsteen’s Factory that perfectly fits the mood of this intimate, pained and powerful set.
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Feb 11, 2016The Ghosts of Highway 20 finds Lucinda Williams bending Americana with jazz phrasing, lush grooves, and unrestrained spirit.
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Feb 3, 2016Though Williams is no stranger to an effective narrative, rarely have her stories captured such a concrete portrayal of human experience at its most unsure moment: the end.
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Jan 27, 2016Her lazy, beaten drawl is an acquired taste, and she wears her scars and bruises for all to see, but Lucinda Williams’ tear-stained tales are so vivid and evocative it’s hard not be haunted.
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Feb 11, 2016Tracks like “Death Came,” “Dust,” and “Bitter Memory” have great lyrics, yet the clear conclusion is that Williams should’ve condensed her second self-released double-disc set since 2014 into one record--two is just too much.
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MojoJan 22, 2016If the alcoholic's lament Death Came teeters close to parody, then the bare-boned country pop of Place In My Heart and Bitter Memory offer some much needed respite. [Feb 2016, p.90]
Awards & Rankings
User score distribution:
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Positive: 15 out of 20
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Mixed: 2 out of 20
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Negative: 3 out of 20
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Oct 1, 2016
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Apr 30, 2016
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Feb 20, 2016