Essence is the sixth studio album by American singer-songwriter Lucinda Williams, released on June 5, 2001, by Lost Highway Records.[3] The album debuted on the Billboard 200 at No. 28, selling approximately 44,500 copies in its first week.[4] By 2008, it had sold 336,000 copies in the U.S.[5]
Essence was met with widespread critical acclaim. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from professional publications, the album received an average score of 82, based on 11 reviews.[3] Reviewers observed a departure from Williams' similarly acclaimed 1998 album Car Wheels on a Gravel Road, with Rolling Stone citing the "willful intimacy" in Essence's music[12] and Spin contrasting the "halting, spare" presentation with its predecessor's "giddy, verbose" one.[14]AllMusic similarly stated "those hoping for another dose of the bluesy roots rock of Car Wheels on a Gravel Road may be disappointed, but if you want to take a deep and compelling look into the heart and soul of a major artist, then you owe it to yourself to hear Essence.[7]
The Village Voice critic Robert Christgau found it "imperfect" but still praised Williams' artistry, saying "[she] is too damn good to deny."[9]Salon regarded the album as "an emotional mess of a masterpiece".[15]Entertainment Weekly wrote "Lucinda Williams doesn’t merely wallow in suffering. She savors it like a glass of your finest Bordeaux", and called it her "folkiest, gentlest album" and "a steamy slow-crawl — southern humidity as music — that plays into her strengths as the Joan of Dark of the alt-country set".[10]Q listed Essence as one of the best 50 albums of 2001.[16]
