Personnel: Lucinda Williams (vocals, acoustic guitar, electric guitar); Elvis Costello (vocals); Doug Pettibone (acoustic guitar, acoustic 12-string guitar, electric guitar, electric 6-string guitar, electric 12-string guitar, electric slide guitar, dobro, background vocals); Chet Lyster (acoustic guitar, electric guitar, steel guitar, musical saw); David Sutton (guitarron, cello, double bass, electric bass); Butch Norton (bullroarer, chang, drums, congas, cymbals, finger cymbals, maracas, rainsticks, tambourine, bell); Rob Burger (accordion, piano, Fender Rhodes piano, Hammond b-3 organ, pump organ, Wurlitzer organ, Mellotron, vibraphone); Albert Wing (tenor saxophone); Walt Fowler (trumpet, flugelhorn); Bruce Fowler (trombone); Jim Lauderdale, Kristin Mooney, Matthew Sweet, Susanna Hoffs, Susan Marshall, Gia Ciambotti, Charlie Louvin (background vocals).

Audio Mixer: Eric Liljestrand.

Arrangers: Eric Liljestrand; Bruce Fowler.

WEST, from 2007, was one of Lucinda Williams' most personal and dark albums, a heartbroken meditation, mostly about the recent death of her mother. In years past, Williams likely would have retreated following such a major statement: in the first two decades of her career, spaces of nearly five years between albums weren't unheard of. Instead, the Louisiana-bred singer-songwriter knuckled down and recorded the exuberant LITTLE HONEY, perhaps her sunniest and most gleefully rocking album ever. Kicking off with the stomping, sexy single "Real Love," this is Williams in the rollicking "Passionate Kisses" side of her musical personality. Her lyrics are as sharp as ever, particularly on the wry ballad "If Wishes Were Horses" and the Elvis Costello duet, "Jailhouse Tears." Other guests include Matthew Sweet and Susanna Hoffs, whose Buckingham-Nicks harmonies decorate several tunes, adding to the album's sunny and poppy vibe.

Lucinda Williams has made a career of writing terrific unrequited love songs, shattered ballads, and sexually liberated tomes drenched in blues, country, folk and rock. Since her breakthrough on 1998's Car Wheels on a Gravel Road, she's actually recorded quite regularly; Little Honey is her fourth studio album this decade so far and fifth overall -- in the '90s she released a total of two. Williams throws some more change-ups into the mix this time. For starters, this is the most polished and studied record she's ever made. Produced by Eric Liljestrand and Tom Overby, its sound is utterly contemporary, though its forms are rooted in electric '70s rock as well as her fallbacks on blues and old-school Americana. The set opens with the rollicking "Real Love," with jangling, charging guitars by Doug Pettibone, and Rob Burger on Wurlitzer, and a backing chorus held down by the Bangles' Susanna Hoffs and Matthew Sweet. Its pop/rock bent is tempered by the roiling pace and Williams trademark Louisiana voice. But it's a startling introduction to an album that, while produced with a certain conscious flair, is the most loosely focused of her career in terms of her songwriting.

Williams can still write the beautiful cut-time country tunes, such as the ballad "Circles and X's" and the honky tonk "Jailhouse Tears," a fun throwaway duet with Elvis Costello, and a backing chorus that includes Jim Lauderdale. The blues make their appearance on the beautiful "Tears of Joy" and the appropriately titled "Heaven Blues," a song that references her late mother and redemption, with excellent slide work by Pettibone. Greasy, punched up guitar rock is what fuels the sexually charged "Honey Bee," and a cover of AC/DC's "Long Way to the Top" (though her arrangement on the latter doesn't work). There's also the beautiful, but lyrically indulgent, "Little Rock Star" a warning to the unnamed talents who live in the self-made hell of excess. Williams should know. The album's longest cut is "Rarity," a poignantly gorgeous, heartfelt, cough-syrup tribute to an unnamed but very talented peer. It features Hoffs and Sweet, and a lovely gospel horn arrangement by Bruce Fowler. Its languid, lazy pace is atmospheric and draws itself out over eight minutes making for one of the most memorable moments here. Quoting Williams' lyrics out of context doesn't serve for this record, because they are more directly song lyrics than the poetry she's crafted in song form before. Upon first listen Little Honey is quite jarring for all of its textural and production shifts and dodges, but in time it settles into the listener as a mixed collection of decent songs that pack some punch, but no jaw-dropping wallops. The faithful will no doubt enjoy this set, but the novice should look to earlier albums to discover what all the critical fuss has been about these last 25 years. ~ Thom Jurek

Rolling Stone (p.80) - 4 stars out of 5 -- "While it shows that the 55-year-old barbed-wire country singer is wary of rock's trappings, LITTLE HONEY proves she's still crushed out on the music."

Rolling Stone (p.91) - Ranked #18 in Rolling Stone's 50 Best Albums Of 2008 -- "[With] snarling Stones-ish guitars, brisk tempos and a slew of funny punch lines."

Spin (p.90) - 4 stars out of 5 -- "Williams goes back to the roots-rock well and takes a long, satisfying swig....What unites the songs is the restored hope in Williams' singing..."

Spin (p.47) - Ranked #30 in Spin's "40 Best Albums Of 2008" -- "After 30 years of weepers and heartbreakers, Williams proves she can also sing he-done-me-right songs."

Entertainment Weekly (p.98) - "She sounds happier than she has in years, singing mostly about domestic contentment with an audible grin."

Mojo (Publisher) (p.104) - 3 stars out of 5 -- "Country and rock meet the blues and Williams certainly seems to enjoy creating a kind of aural miniguide to all that is Americana."

Paste (magazine) (p.50) - "Not since her masterpiece 1998's CAR WHEELS ON A GRAVEL ROAD, has Williams dug so deep and come up with an album that brims with such varied, impeccable writing."

Record Collector (magazine) (p.98) - 4 stars out of 5 -- "The electric guitars are cranked up for the opening 'Real Love' and the garage fuzz of 'Honey Bee,' and there's a seedy country crawl to the Elvis Costello duet 'Jailhouse Tears'..."