Lucinda Williams' Little Honey

Here is a musician that never ceases to amaze me. That's not to say that everything she tries on her new record actually works; it just amazes me how hard she keeps trying. Now 55 years old, she has already created three masterpieces in three different decades (1988's Lucinda Williams, 1998's Car Wheels On A Gravel Road, 2003's World Without Tears). Little Honey is an album filled with brilliant ideas and a few failures, so I'm going to have to separate the good from the bad.

Good:
- "Tears Of Joy" - Gospel blues built for a Baptist church with some outstanding guitar soloing.
- "Honey Bee" - This sexually explicit stomper could have been stolen from the White Stripes.
- "If Wishes Were Horses" - How can any man turn down an apology this sad and beautiful?
- "Knowing" - The Memphis horns actually work for her on another great lonesome ballad.
- "Plan To Marry" - Simple: Lucinda and guitar. Bliss. One of her best.

Bad:
-"Jailhouse Tears" - For the love of God, everybody stop letting Elvis Costello guest on your album.
-"Little Rock Star" - She's trying to do a spaced-out power ballad now? Why?
-"Rarity" - This goes almost nowhere for almost nine minutes.
-"It's A Long Way To The Top" - Doesn't she think she's above covering AC-DC? The song is as bad as the idea.

This album has enough good ideas to be worth buying if you are already a Lucinda fan, but it has enough bad ideas to scare away the uninitiated. If you want to know why everybody loves her, start with Car Wheels On A Gravel Road. It's still nice to hear her trying every idea she comes across, but maybe two albums in two years is a bit too fast.