Joan Anderman has a review in today’s Boston Globe of last night’s John Mellencamp show. The Mellencamp portion, as you can almost certainly guess, is skippable, but Joan does have some interesting information on the evening’s opener:

“Lucinda Williams also debuted songs from her forthcoming album, due in September, and from the sound of it this one is a full-blown rocker. Stonesy “Real Love,” the gritty waltz “Little Rock Star,” and a raw, fast blues called “Honey Bee” were natural extensions of “Changed the Locks,” “Come On,” and “Real Live Bleeding Fingers and Broken Guitar Strings,” all included in her opening set. It was a window on a woman growing tougher and stronger by the year.”

First off, it’s interesting that Lucinda would choose to debut new material as an opening act. This is either an act of a woman who: a) is so confident in the material that she believes she can win over the Mellencamp audience; b) thinks the Mellencamp audience would be unfamiliar with her work anyway, so she might as well try out the new stuff; or c) decided to take a nice payday as Mellencamp’s opener before touring as a headliner this fall after her record release.

I saw Lucinda headline the same venue last year, and she included the aforementioned “Honey Bee” in that set. If that is any indication of the rest of her new material, we’re in for a set of underwritten lyrics delivered in the unappealing growl she has adopted in the past few years to sing her harder rock songs. I’m afraid.