Lucinda Williams: Essence (Lost Highway)

HOW D'YOU follow up a Grammy-winning, plaudit-garnering album that took three years and as many producers to make? Well, you go to Minneapolis and get into a groove — aided by the hunt'n'peck guitar of Bo Ramsey, the percussion parade band that is Jim Keltner, Dylan bandmates Tony Garnier and Charlie Sexton, topped off by David Mansfields’ plangent viola and Reese Wynan’s B3 smears. You also write some really depressing songs about love as a drug, sex as a drug, and well, God as a drug. At a time when few in the country/blues/roots area transcend their influences, Lucinda Williams plowed a narrow furrow that was hers alone.