ARTIST : Lucinda Williams
TITLE : Little Honey
LABEL : Lost Highway
GENRE : Country
BITRATE : 192 kbps avg
SOURCE : CD (LP)
PLAYTIME : 01:04:44
SIZE : 93.3MB
STORE DATE : 2008-10-14
Track List
----------
1. Real Love 3:45
2. Circles And X's 3:40
3. Tears Of Joy 4:27
4. Little Rock Star 5:42
5. Honey Bee 3:05
6. Well Well Well 4:29
7. If Wishes Were Horses 5:40
8. Jailhouse Tears 5:28
9. Knowing 6:00
10. Heaven Blues 5:23
11. Rarity 8:43
12. Plan To Marry 3:26
13. It's A Long Way To The Top 4:56
Lucinda Williams has always been adept at painting
landscapes of the soul, illuminating the spirit’s shadowy
nooks and shimmering crannies -- but she’s never captured
the sun breaking through the clouds as purely as on her
new Lost Highway release, Little Honey. “I’m in a
different phase of my life, so there are more happy
moments on this album,” the singer-songwriter says of her
ninth studio set. “ ‘Darkly introspective,’ is one phrase
people have used to describe a lot of my songs. There are
moody songs, but I’m looking outside myself a little bit
more. These aren’t ‘boy meets girl, boy leaves girl, girl
gets bummed out’ songs -- there’s a lot more than that
going on.”
Williams wastes no time signaling that mood change,
leading into Little Honey's opener, “Real Love” with a
false start riff that's the six-string equivalent of a
friendly wink – then sidling into the tune's hard-rocking
vibe with a sensual slink that underscores the passion of
finding exactly what that title indicates. The bluesy
physicality of that tune is echoed in several of Little
Honey's tracks, from the charmingly chugging “Honeybee”
to the gorgeous melodies of “If Wishes Were Horses”.
“I’m stepping out and writing about things other than
unrequited love. But because that’s not part of my
experience anymore,” she explains, “doesn’t mean I’m
going to stop being a songwriter. There are plenty of
other important things to write about -- the state of the
world, for one thing -- I don’t buy into the myth that
because you get to a certain level of contentment, you
have to throw in the towel.”
While Little Honey certainly has plenty to move the hips,
Williams doesn't neglect her uncanny ability to do the
same to the heart. The sparse delta delivery she affords
“Heaven Blues” -- a keening consideration of what might
await on the other side – hits home thanks to its
arresting blend of hope and vexation, while the epic
“Rarity” rides soft waves of brass (instrumentation never
before heard on one of her discs).
“The one thing the songs have in common is directness,”
she says. “The beauty of country and blues is their
simplicity, it’s about getting things across in a really
direct way. I’ve spent a while stretching out and going
in different directions, which is my nature. But I feel
that I can always embrace that original simplicity again
-- that’s why I went back to record ‘Circles and Xs,’
which I actually wrote back in 1985.”
Over the course of a recording career that's now in its
fourth decade, the Louisiana-born singer has navigated
terrain as varied as the dust-bowl starkness of her 1978
debut Ramblin’ (recorded on the fly with a mere 250
dollar budget behind her) and the stately elegance of
last year's West (which Vanity Fair called “the record of
a lifetime”). Between those signposts, Lucinda Williams
established a reputation as one of rock's most
uncompromising and consistently fascinating writers and
performers, earning kudos from artists as diverse as
Mary-Chapin Carpenter (who helped win Williams a Grammy
with her recording of “Passionate Kisses”) and Elvis
Costello (who joins her for a duet on the Little Honey
mini-drama “Jailhouse Tears”).
Williams learned the importance of professional integrity
around the same time most kids are learning their ABCs,
thanks in a large part to her award-winning poet father
Miller Williams -- who invested her with a “culturally
rich, but economically poor” upbringing where artistic
expression was of primary importance. Later, she’d hone
her vision playing hardscrabble clubs around her adopted
home state of Texas, absorbing the influence of sources
as varied as Bob Dylan and Lightnin’ Hopkins.
“I sometimes say I just started out singing folk songs
acoustically by default,” she recalls. “Even when I was
playing open mic nights by myself, I’d be sitting up on
stage with my Martin guitar doing ‘Angel’ by Jimi Hendrix
or ‘Politician’ by Cream alongside Robert Johnson and
Memphis Minnie songs. It never occurred to me to pick
just one style.”
She’s never settled for any sort of pigeonholing,
entering the ‘90s with the slow-burning Sweet Old World
-- a disc that, as much as any release, helped place the
Americana movement at the forefront of listeners’ minds
-- and cementing her own spot in the cultural lexicon
with 1998’s rough-hewn masterpiece Car Wheels on a Gravel
Road.
The latter disc earned Williams her first Grammy as a
performer, but rather than try to capture the same
lightning in a bottle a second time, she stretched her
boundaries on 2001’s Essence, an album rife with both
cerebral interludes and soul-stirring stomps. In recent
times, Williams has broadened her palette even further
through frequent collaborations with kindred spirits --
acts as varied as The North Mississippi All-Stars and
Flogging Molly -- who share her uncommon sense of
non-revivalist traditionalism.
Little Honey continues that ongoing forward quest, mixing
country, R & B and blues-rock elements with adventurous
aplomb. The disc gets an added octane boost from the
powerful chemistry between the musicians, primarily drawn
from Williams’ latest road band (now collectively known
as Buick 6) -- includes bassist David Sutton, Eels
veterans Butch Norton and Chet Lyster as well as longtime
collaborator Doug Pettibone.
Williams augments that core unit with a passel of
like-minded folks spanning a huge chunk of the musical
spectrum, from octogenarian singing legend Charlie Louvin
to power-pop vets Susannah Hoffs and Matthew Sweet, the
latter of whom helped arrange the Spector-tinged “Little
Rock Star” -- applying studio skills that prompted
Williams to dub him “this generation’s Brian Wilson.”
“I feel that this is the most eclectic record I’ve ever
done, and I’ve always been known for being eclectic,” she
says. “ For this album, I was comfortable just letting
the songs flow, and not worried about being so serious
and heavy and having to top myself -- and I think that
shows.”
She needn’t have worried for a minute because, with
Little Honey, Lucinda Williams has indeed topped herself
again.
