LUCINDA WILLIAMS West Lost Highway/Universal ****

She's a driller killer, a wordsmith dentist doing rigorous root canal work and, by God, you'd just hate to be the poor sap that mistreats her. It seems that Lucinda Williams has been hurting some - West, her eighth album in a series of very fine if somewhat uneasy listening experiences, is mourning the death of her mother and musing on the end of a love affair. While the former allows Williams to express a rare and elegant tenderness (Mama You Sweet, Fancy Funeral), it's the latter subject matter that holds the album in a tight, pitbull grip.

Unsuffer Me is a case in point. Williams drawls in her crackling, desert-dry voice a litany of coarse requests ("Anoint my head with your sweet kiss/My joy is dead, I long for bliss . . . Undo my logic, undo my fear, unsuffer me") to keep her on the emotional straight and narrow. Come On is a flinty kiss-off to a former lover ("Dude, I'm so over you . . . " it starts, triggering a bruising stumble all the way down), while Wrap My Head Around That is nine-plus minutes of smart wordplay, lean blues-rock and even more putdowns.

West drives the point home that there isn't a female singer of Williams's generation that can touch her; she's supremely vicious and unremittingly honest in her depiction of the betrayals of the soul and the body, the gritty, tormented stuff that makes life interesting if bloody uncomfortable. Her troubles, too, are complemented by startling lyrics that sparkle with a natural poeticism - everything here resonates with the boot-stamp of bitter'n'twisted truth and no small grace. www.LucindaWilliams.com