World Without Tears [LP], Lucinda Williams, Vinyl

World Without Tears, Williams employed a live-on-the-floor production ethic that not only had the musicians playing together-a relative rarity on major label rock recordings-but playing without the isolation/separation that producers use to keep the sound of each instrument from bleeding into the other musicians' microphones. The record therefore has less separation between instruments and much more "room" sound than typical. It's the wettest acoustic I've heard on a rock record in quite a while. On CD, the result is not particularly pleasant. The natural reverberation places a murk over the sound, which is diffuse and distant.