From Country Soul to Punk and Metal, Lucinda Williams & Buick 6 Cross Genres Without Fettering Much About It!

Lucinda Williams - Little Honey (Lost Highway)

I’ve always had a hard time listening Lucinda Williams songs. The way she can write a song, usually about love lost, broken heats, or bad relationships ( “Change the Locks,” and “Joy” are good example), they’ve always hit home with me. The aching, the pain, the struggle, the joy, and happiness, it’s like she’s having a one on one musical conversation with you. You just know that she’s speaking usually from personal experience. Amazing how she can touch you so deep.

On Little Honey, Lucinda’s found her soul mate, and is head over heels in love, like on the opening cut “Real Love.” It’s a guitar fueled rocker with a sunny vibe. But she still finds the sense of loss and longing in songs like “Circles and X’s,” or “Well, Well, Well,” that dates back to 1992’s Sweet Old World.

The sweet, pedal steel guitar work by Doug Pettibone on “Tears of Joy,” puts the song at the forefront, mixing and matching genre’s with effortless enthusiasm. Buick 6 which will be her touring band this time around supplies the musical mojo. They’re also the opening act, so you just know that these guys are going to have a lot of extra gas in their tank!

After hearing the band absolutely rock out one of nastiest jams ever on “Honey Bee,” it struck me that I’d love to hear Lucinda and Joan Jett write a couple of songs together. Hell, how about a whole album and a tour! Add to the mix a wide-eyed, flat-out rocker, a twangy cover of AC/DC’s “It’s a Long Way to the Top.” it’s Lucinda and the band sounding like road warriors dispensing advice to those younger bands that are about to rock: “Getting had/Getting took? I tell you folks, it‘s harder than it looks/ It‘s a long way to the top, if you wanna rock ’n’ roll.” In her own version of how a band measures success on “Rarity,” she mournfully tells the story of a very talented songwriter who can’t find her way in a monstrous music business that lives by the motto that, “Your only as good as your last album,” and “Where’s the Hits?” Stupid, Neanderthalic credos’ that have surly derailed a lot of good artists over the generations.

With Elvis Costello playing the role of her drunken boyfriend in the mini-drama “Jailhouse Tears,” they recreate the love/hate, comic relief relationship that was found in The Pogues’ Fairy Tail of New York” all those eons ago.- A brilliant and sobering piece.

Lucinda’s been recording since the late 70’s, hitting a musical stride in the 80’s with “Car Wheels on a Gravel Road,” which was reissued last year as a two CD set. Although her albums were few and far between up until recently (she released the strikingly different, downcast “West,” last year), the quality of her writing and musicianship has been steady improving. With much emphasis placed on unfulfilled relationships, Lucinda has that special ability to capture in music a decisive moment between a man and a woman when there is that make or break point, sometimes several where you know it’s not where want to be, but you just can’t help yourself.

“Whatever record I’m doing reflects my life,” Lucinda said in an issue of Rolling Stone. But you know that from listening to her past albums, and epically Little Honey, that she doesn’t have much use for the idea that personal contentment might take away her artistic edge. A relationship or what happens I life for that matter, will never be TOO good.

What makes Little Honey, and Lucinda William’s body of work so meaningful is, that the mark of a true artist is to synthesize various musical elements, and then create something that is completely original. She has definitely captured that spirit and sense of artistic vibrancy here.- Phil Rainone