Lucinda Williams
Little Honey

Review By Jeff Ehrbar

Was Lucinda Williams disappointed with East, her downer 2007 CD?  At a recent show in Columbus, Ohio, Williams played no selections from that disc. Also, Williams usually takes three to four years between albums, but Little Honey comes only a year after East. This is fortunate: on Little Honey, Williams returns to her raucous, sumptuous sound.

While East was intricately produced, Little Honey has a smoky, after-hours nightclub quality that’s much like 2003’s World Without Tears. But the songs on Little Honey don’t sound one-offish — they sound like they were played repeatedly and aggressively until Williams got the take she envisioned.

The CD’s opener, the straight-ahead “Real Love,” has a theme that permeates Little Honey: the healing quality of rock ’n’ roll.  On “Real Love,” music has brought her love, as she has found “a real love/standing behind an electric guitar.” Despite its Chicago blues style, “Tears of Joy” celebrates the finding of “a real man/don’t have to pretend” with female background vocals and guitarist Doug Pettibone’s screeching lead guitar.

Sometimes, though, Williams’ belief in rock music does border on Spinal Tap-satire. “Little Rock Star” is a stereotype of the performer as high priest/victim (“will you go up in the flames/like the torches that they carried for you?”) while “Rarity” rehashes the myth of the big bad music business destroying the sensitive artist. But you don’t buy a Lucinda Williams CD for its logic or reasoning. On both songs, Williams fully uses the melodramatics to their fullest — full choir, mallet stick drum rolls, vibraphone, Memphis horns — and these powerful arrangements are moving, even if they’re indulgent.

While there’s no irony in Williams’ take on AC/DC’s “It’s A Long Way to the Top (If You Want to Rock and Roll),” there’s also no humor. While the original version worked off of AC/DC’s over-the-top bombast, Williams plays “It’s A Long Way” like it’s a documentary of the injustices of her chosen career. Saving the take is Pettibone, carrying the song with a driving, edgy lead (this long-time Williams’ sideman should be featured on the next edition of Guitar Hero).

It’s Pettibone’s guitar attack on “Honey Bee” that makes it the best song on the CD. With Pettibone blasting away with fellow guitarist Chet Lyster, Williams sounds like Joan Jett if she were raised in Mississippi.  (What’s more amazing about the performance here is that Williams is twice the age of Jett in her prime.)  Like many rock ’n’ roll classics, “Honey Bee” is sticky with such double-entendres as “you’ve become my weakness/now I’ve got your sweetness/all up in my hair.”  Another hoot is a honky-tonk duet with Elvis Costello on “Jailhouse Blues,” complete with filthy language and attitude.

As expected, Little Honey features some strong ballads, the best of which is “Knowing.”  With the slow sweetness reminiscent of “World Without Tears” or “Side of the Road,” a new love has sparked a new consciousness: “I didn’t know how precious time would mean/how fragile a kiss could be/that all I did was dream.”