

What the 73-year-old singer-songwriter’s 16th album lacks in subtlety it makes up for in pure, righteous anger—an unstable substance in the hands of youth, but one that Williams wields with the steadiness and purpose of someone who knows that truth takes time. Tired of the news (“The World’s Gone Wrong”), outraged to exhaustion (the hymn-like “We’ve Come Too Far to Turn Around”), and no longer afraid of the moral high ground (“How Much Did You Get for Your Soul”), she daydreams of divine vengeance (“Punchline”—as in, “Did God forget it?”). But perhaps more realistically, more miraculously, on “Low Life” she daydreams of a bar at the end of the world where the real hearts can ride it out in something like peace.