Lyrics Simply Complex, Subtly Provocative

Lucinda Williams just isn’t the type to work up a good sweat on stage. Intimacy is far more important to her brand of folk-rock and blues, which builds an atmosphere of emotional grit and longing that would be at home in any urban honky-tonk.

At the first of a three-night engagement at LunaPark on Sunday, Williams and her three-piece band played a no-frills set that was only superficially relaxed. Within those subtle, country-rock shadings were tales of real experience, whether she was singing about the suicide of an Arkansas poet or of failed romance as sad and mad as a George Jones tune. Williams’ blend of wit and wisdom has regularly attracted the likes of Emmylou Harris, Mary Chapin Carpenter and Patty Loveless to her songbook.

At Luna Park, Williams mixed older work with new songs set to be recorded as part of her recent signing to American Recordings (label owner and producer Rick Rubin was a conspicuously bearded presence at a table near the stage).

Among those new compositions was “Greenville,” a song that told of the end of a troubled, explosive relationship, sung in Williams’ strong but weary voice. She told the crowd her new song “Too Cruel to Be Forgotten” was inspired by her recent discovery of the photographs of Shelby Lee Adams and Birney Imes and their rich scenes of culture and decay in Appalachia.

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Williams, who plays tonight at the Coach House, was a pleasant, if soft-spoken, host, regularly turning for the new songs to a loose stack of lyric sheets on a convenient bar stool.

She stood in near-darkness at center stage in a black T-shirt and long skirt, only occasionally putting down her electric guitar to sing the more emotionally wrought numbers.

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Though Williams and the band played some convincing rockers at the end of their one-hour set, they were most effective when gliding at a slower pace.

It was then that Williams demonstrated the virtue of restraint, where a well-timed vocal pause or a brief moment of slide guitar can say more than the usual hyper-rock guitar solo cranked up to 11.

* Lucinda Williams and Sam Llanas play folk-rock tonight at the Coach House, 33157 Camino Capistrano, San Juan Capistrano. 8 p.m. $10. (714) 496-8930.