At the end of the week, the Paranoid Style — the rock band led by the great singer-songwriter, journalist, and occasional Stereogum contributor Elizabeth Nelson — will release their new album Known Associates. They’ve dropped a bunch of advance tracks, which we will include at the bottom of this post, but today our focus is on their new cover of country-rock legend Lucinda Williams.
Known Associates includes the Paranoid Style’s take on “Passionate Kisses,” which appeared on Williams’ 1988 self-titled album and was a hit for Mary Chapin Carpenter in 1992. It’s a song about wanting it all: “Is it too much to demand? I want a full house and a rock ‘n’ roll band.” Nelson gave an interview to Magnet to go along with the cover, and it includes insights about Williams’ appeal that dovetail nicely with this song’s lyrical sentiment:
I reviewed her awesome memoir for The Wall Street Journal, and there’s this anecdote where she is being produced by Steve Earle—whom I also love—but she wasn’t happy with a vocal take and kept on wanting to redo it until she found the ineffable thing she was looking for. Earle was getting frustrated, thinking he had lots of great takes, and, eventually, they had a big argument about this. And Lu was basically like, “If Bruce Springsteen wants to sing 400 takes, he’s an uncompromising genius. If I want to do that, I’m just a woman acting insane.”
And that’s the thing I’d tell the up-and-coming ladies to be aware of. Even a lot of well-intentioned dudes are going to try and make you feel like you’re being difficult for simply standing up for yourself. You’ll be second guessed constantly. You’ll have to quiet those voices in your mind. There’s a lyric in “Tearing The Ticket” that goes: “They told me I’d never make it/I told them where to stick it.” That’s straight Lu. If they don’t believe, then fuck ’em.
Listen below along with the winsome prior singles “Elegant Bachelors,” “White Wine Whatever,” “It’s A Dog’s Breakfast (For LR),” and “Tearing The Ticket.”
Known Associates is out 2/13 on Bar/None. Pre-order it here.