Year’s End Lists Re: Little Honey
ROLLING STONE
Albums Of The Year
#18 “Little Honey” Lucinda Williams has been channeling hard-won wisdom into laments for so long, it is a shock to behold the singer love-struck. Williams being Williams, the happy songs hedge their bets, but high spirits predominate, as do snarling Stones-ish guitars, brisk tempos and a slew of funny punch lines.
SPIN
Top 40 Albums Of 2008
#30 “Little Honey” After 30 years of weepers and heartbreakers, Williams proves she can also sing he-done-me-right songs. The aggrieved ex who growled, “You took my joy / I want it back” on 1998’s Car Wheels on a Gravel Road is now singing “Tears of Joy” — though still slinging stormy riffs, honky-tonk harmonies, and bourbon-soaked soul. Apparently, not even domestic bliss (the recently engaged singer reveals she found love “standing up behind an electric guitar”) can water down her liquor.
TIME
Top 10 Albums of 2008
#9 “Little Honey” After years in misery’s ditch, Williams finally put out a happy album, but it’s a little more nuanced than its publicity. Songs like “Tears of Joy” and the grinding guitar-rocker “Real Love,” show off a singer no longer ill at ease with easy pleasures (although, uncharacteristically, she’s suddenly at ease with lyrical cliché) while the Elvis Costello duet “Jailhouse Tears” proves she can even be funny. For all the smiles, there’s also plenty of material where the mood darkens. “Circles and X’s” and the glorious “Wishes Were Horses” (”If wishes were horses/ I’d have a ranch”) get Williams back to longing, territory where she’s unrivaled as a writer and unbeatable as a singer. The balance, though, makes this Williams’ sweetest album.
BLENDER
Top 144 Songs of 2008
#13 “Real Love”
AUSTIN CHRONCILE
Top 10 National CD’s of 2008 - #1
PASTE
Best Of 2008
#9 “Little Honey” It’s her most sonically and emotionally diverse record ever, and her best since Car Wheels On A Gravel Road.
NEWSDAY
Best Albums Of 2008
#2 Happiness suits Lucinda Williams. On “Little Honey,” she rolls out non-sappy love songs (“Tears of Joy”), alt-country prayers for serenity (“The Knowing” and “Heaven Blues”) and all-out rockers (“Honey Bee” and “Real Love”).
NEWARK STAR-LEDGER
Top Albums of 2008
#7 ”Little Honey,” Lucinda Williams (Lost Highway)
…one of the year’s best.
MINNEAPOLIS STAR TRIBUNE
Favorite Albums of 2008
#8 ”Little Honey.” She’s in a love-struck (not love-sucks) phase for a change. Which means: less poetic but harder rocking.
CLEVELAND PLAIN DEALER
Top 10 Albums of 2008
#7 ”Little Honey” (Lost Highway) The belle of the Americana ball shines on “Real Love,” a fun remake of AC/DC’s “It’s a Long Way to the Top” and “Jailhouse Tears,” a twangy duet with Elvis Costello.
FORT WORTH STAR-TELEGRAM
Little Honey: Lusty, loose and wonderfully ragged, this explosive country-rock collection is the singer/songwriter’s most consistent, compelling disc in a decade.
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER
Top 10 albums of 2008
#5 Williams proves that a happier, more fulfilled life can yield an album just as compelling as those of her more downcast, introspective periods.
CREATIVE LOAFING
Top 10 CD’s of 2008
#1 On Little Honey, alt-country queen Lucinda Williams returns to the more focused, rock-oriented sonics of her breakthrough 1998 album Car Wheels on a Gravel Road.
POPMATTERS
Best Albums of 2008
#34 Believe it or not, folks, this is Our Lucinda’s Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea, her “Crazy in Love” and it’s mostly breathtaking, as strong as all save one (you know which) of those records she put out back when she was (ostensibly) miserable, an almost 20-year (!) stretch bookended by 1979’s Ramblin’ and last year’sWest.
Best Singles of 2008
#43 “Rarity” Nearly nine minutes, this gorgeous, honest song seems part eulogy to the nurturing music industry artists were fortunate enough to enjoy in the ‘70s and part damning indictment about what that industry has devolved into.
BLURT
Best of 2008 - #15
NO DEPRESSION
Top 40 Albums of 2008 - #6
NPR
Listener’s Poll
#39 From the album’s opening track, the surging, angular, almost punk-feeling riff-rocker “Real Love”; through several blues compositions, country-honker “Well Well Well” and the swampy, slide/harp-fueled “Heavy Blues;” Little Honey never falters.
CHICAGO SUN-TIMES
Americana, Bluegrass & Country’s Best of 2008
#2 Lucinda Williams, Little Honey