Lucinda Williams "Buttercup"

Bands with two songwriters often have a split fan base.

Whether it's The Beatles or Uncle Tupelo or The Indigo Girls, there is frequently a vocal contingent of fans who have a preference for John or for Paul, Farrar or Tweedy, Emily or Amy.

In the Indigo Girls case, Emily usually writes the gorgeous, touching love songs, and Amy, punk rocker at heart, pens rough and tumble poetry.

Indigo Girls fans usually favor one over the other. I, myself, am an Amy fan.

And in the case of Lucinda Williams, I am a fan of Lucinda Williams. But not so much a fan of Lucinda Williams.

Yes, there is only one Lucinda Williams, but often it seems like she's two different songwriters.

Lucinda has laid bare her love live in good times and bad, with both wrenching portraits of her break-ups, and intimate, often openly carnal descriptions on Love on the upswing. In good times and bad, these songs are usually plainspoken and direct, like "Essence":

Baby, sweet baby, you're my drug
Come on and let me taste your stuff
Baby, sweet baby, bring me your gift
What surprise you gonna hit me with?

I am waiting here for more
I am waiting by your door
I am waiting on your back steps
I am waiting in my car
I am waiting at this bar
I am waiting for your essence

When she steps away from herself and first person adventures in love, she will write these devastating, poetic snapshots of times and places and people. Like this look at another singer she admires, in "Real Live Bleeding Fingers And Broken Guitar Strings":

I climbed all the way inside
Your tragedy
I got behind
The majesty
Of the different shapes
In every note
the endless tapes
of every word you wrote

Even if you don't know the songs, just reading the lyrics, dry, doesn't the 2nd set seem deeper, more complex, and more like something that would come from the pen of a woman who's been described as America's best songwriter?

Descriptive flashes like the scenes in "2 Cool 2 B Forgotten" and "Car Wheels On A Gravel Road" are much more interesting to me than "Real Love"'s repetitive line: "I found the love that I've been looking for, it's a real love, it's a real love."

My theory on the 2 Lucinda's is that the closer the lyrics are to her real life, the more she relies on the emotion behind the words (not the words themselves) for their punch. She can repeat "it's a real love, it's a real love" over and over with exuberance and that conveys the joyous feeling she's trying to conjure.

As she gets away from herself in her writing, she turns more to the details to tell the story, and the phrases and descriptions carry the weight of the message.

How much of a Lucinda album is love/guy songs, verses the other type of tune, seems to depend largely on Lucinda's love life. If she's newly in or out of love, you get a lot of those songs. If she's in a stable relationship, or in a stretch of being single, the focus turns away from romance gone good, or bad.

So when we got "Buttercup," the first single from her new record, last week, I thought, "Okay, the new record is more love songs." And that's what I was going to write about.

Searching on Youtube for a version of the song, I happened upon this fan-shot video, where Lucinda let's us know that "Buttercup" is actually the only Bad Boy song on the new record. After the last record, she just had to get one more of them out, before turning to other lyrical matter.

Hear Lucinda explain it herself, and enjoy the charming way she messes up the song, and starts over.