While there isn't much to be said for lousy governance and corrupt authority, I can think of one thing: sometimes they inspire outstanding music. Oddly, on occasion even non-political songs seem better during bad times, possibly because we may think they carry hidden messages even when they don't. It's hard to doubt, however, that deeply felt songs are one effective form of resistance to a threatening tyrannical order, as witness the still-sung anthems of the 1960s civil-rights era, aimed originally at American apartheid and its legal enforcers.

Even if otherwise forgotten, villains have left their mark on our national song collection. For example, it's remarkable how many situations can still be applied to the defiantly resistant "Which Side are You On?" written by Florence Reece to a traditional melody during a violent miners' strike in Harlan County, Kentucky, in 1931. You don't even have to identify the prominently cited J.H. Blair (in fact the thuggish county sheriff ) to grasp that, like so many before and after him, he served moneyed interests against the suffering not so fortunate.

The author of the misery Lucinda Williams chronicles in World's Gone Wrong -- a title variant from the Mississippi Sheiks ("The World is Going Wrong") and decades later a Bob Dylan album of it and other traditional music (World Gone Wrong) -- is never named. No one, however, will fail to recognize him: the guy who took up free rental space inside your head a decade ago and who has since become an all but universally reviled presence. His malevolent ghost haunts nearly every one of the 10 tracks. (The one cover is the late Bob Marley's "So Much Trouble in the World.") If he's still welcome in your head, you will not want to hear this album, nor will you want to read what follows.

On the other hand, if you're in the market for a spectacularly accomplished album by one of our most notable singer-songwriters, you will derive immense pleasure from the company. Williams is in top form as a vocalist and as a composer with band guitarist Doug Pettibone and husband Tom Overby (also co-producer with the celebrated Nashville studio hand Ray Kennedy). Even in her lesser moments, of which there are few over a storied career, Williams is the equal of just about any roots-fusion (rock/blues/folk) artist on the current scene, arguably akin to a Dylan with more richly developed emotional empathy, social conscience and writing discipline. She gives the impression, moreover, of living in the world with the rest of us, not a practice Dylan has been able to communicate even in his better material in a long time.

That's notwithstanding the consideration that "Low Life" is about hiding in a dive bar where no one knows who she is, also where she can enjoy cheap drinks, listen to Slim Harpo (a pleasant surprise as name checks go, and a testament to her blues savvy), and be allowed inside the joint in her bare feet.

Few of us, of course, have to worry about bothersome fans. Fortunately the song doesn't come across as insufferable as it would have if it had sprung from a lesser imagination. Its larger point, I think, is that these days we all need an escape. Slim Harpo records and "buck-twenty-five" highballs are infinitely preferable to what awaits us out on the streets where the world lurks.

Another blues hero, Robert Johnson, appears in a cameo role as symbolic focus of "How Much Did You Get for Your Soul?" -- a question that might have been asked of him after his legendary midnight encounter at a Mississippi crossroads. In this instance Williams addresses it to those who in our sorry time have made a mockery of public service. Maybe she means the question rhetorically. Myself, I am uncharitable enough to wonder if they possess souls at all.

Though nothing on this album fails to fulfill, something needs to be said for the first (title) cut and the last one, a reworking of a gorgeous older hymn. "The World's Gone Wrong" is an exceptionally well-told story of a working couple's hard times in an economy ever more geared to multiply the riches of the already nauseatingly wealthy. The final number is close to overwhelming in its affirmation of faith and patriotism at a moment when both often feel impossible to sustain. The concluding lyrics give voice to the reality and the hope that will guide us through the nightmare:

We are weary of these trials
Of tribulations we are tired
But we have come too far to turn around.