There are songs that you love for the lyrics, songs that you love for the music; sometimes you get a song where both are so perfect you have a masterpiece. Lucinda Williams’ Metal Firecracker is the perfect example, sitting right at the heart of the magnificent Car Wheels on a Gravel Road album.
It starts with the snap of a snare drum and then that gorgeous guitar riff. Played by Gurf Morlix, it rolls and rises, and falls in a way that every guitar player wishes they could replicate. Somehow, it creates the impression of movement, of endless highways stretching out ahead, a recurring theme throughout the parent album. With just guitar, bass, drums and organ, there’s plenty of space for those guitar lines to breathe, and the whole thing has a wonderfully unhurried quality, as though the music itself is travelling down one of those highways.
Morlix’s contribution is particularly poignant given that this was one of his final recordings with Williams before their famously acrimonious falling out, which led to much of the album being re-recorded. Thankfully, this one survived.
Williams’ vocal delivery makes it all the more affecting. There’s no grandstanding here, just the sound of someone trying to hold on to a little dignity as a relationship falls apart, almost like listening in on a conversation in a coffee house. Never given to over-emotional delivery, here her performance is just perfect, like she’s just tired of the heartache.
For years, I never quite understood what a metal firecracker actually was. Apparently, it’s a metaphor for the band’s tour bus, which makes sense given that the song is apparently a reflection on the end of Williams’ relationship with her then-bass player. But the beauty of the song is that you don’t need to know any of that to understand exactly what she’s singing about.
It’s the simplicity of the imagery that makes it so powerful. The memory of turning up the radio when a favourite song comes on, and all the shared experiences that a few notes can suddenly bring flooding back. And then there’s that slightly sickening feeling that comes at the end of a relationship, when you realise that all the secrets you’ve shared with someone are now out there in the world, no longer protected by the intimacy that once existed between you.
The chorus distils that feeling into one simple plea: “Don’t tell anybody the secrets I told you”. It’s such a quietly understated expression of vulnerability; not bitter, but sad at the realisation that your lover is now a stranger.
That line, incidentally, became the title of Williams’ memoir, which seems a slightly curious choice given that the book proceeds to do precisely what the song asks her former lover not to do.
I’ve always felt that Car Wheels on a Gravel Road is unusual in that its second half is even stronger than its first, and Metal Firecracker sits right in the middle of that glorious run of songs where Williams’ soul influences kick in, leading to Greenville, Still I Long for Your Kiss and the album closer Jackson. It’s a perfect example of Williams’ ability to take the smallest details of everyday life and turn them into something profoundly moving, and in that run it sits perfectly.
Every time that guitar riff comes around, I’m back on that highway, feeling that heartbreak again.
