Review: “Little Honey,” Lucinda Williams

Austin’s queen of alt-country rocks out on Little Honey, her most varied and joyous album yet.  Coming after last year’s doom-and-gloom fest West, the new album finds Lucinda in love (she’s engaged to her manager) and horny as hell.  “Real Love,” the catchy first track, finds our heroine telling her lover “You squeeze my peaches,” and on “Honey Bee” things get downright nasty.  Guest vocalist Elvis Costello duets on the hilarious double-wide lament “Jailhouse Tears” and Lucinda rocks out (only half successfully) on a cover of AC/DC’s “It’s A Long Way To the Top,” which closes the album.  In between, “Wishes Were Horses” and “Circles and Xs” sound more like the old Lucinda Williams – perhaps because these songs are leftovers from the 1980s.  She delivers a motherly sermon to fast-track poster kids Amy Winehouse and Pete Doherty with the cautionary “Little Rock Star” and flirts with the blues on “Tears Of Joy” and “Heaven Blues.”  It may sound all over the map, but everything here is pretty good.  Rich and full of good tunes, the whole album rocks.  Little Honey finds Lucinda Williams celebrating her newfound love and with the great songs here, that joy is certainly infectious. 

MP3: “Real Love”

Lucinda Williams official website