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Little Honey - Lucinda Williams
Metascore
72 out of 100

Generally favorable reviews - based on 23 Critics

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 15 out of 23
  2. Mixed: 8 out of 23
  3. Negative: 0 out of 23
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  1. Paste Magazine
    92
    Little Honey finds Williams in celebratory mode, with raucous rock, bluesy testimonies and tongue-in-cheek twang.
  2. The A.V. Club
    91
    Williams spent much of this decade proving she can branch out, but here she's staged something even more impressive: a pleasing homecoming.
  3. Austin Chronicle
    89
    With Little Honey, she pays back fans whose faith had waned as her songwriting grew pedantic on recent albums such as "West."
  4. Los Angeles Times
    88
    There's a raw energy on Little Honey--which arrives this week, a little more than a year after 2007's "West"--that's as refreshing as it is palpable.
  5. Uncut
    80
    Little Honey is a heartening and humble album, sufficiently smart and aware to be an expression of thanks for the journey as well as the destination.
  6. Rolling Stone
    80
    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.
  7. Spin
    80
    The result is her finest record since "Car Wheels on a Gravel Road," the decade-old masterpiece by which her career will always be judged.
  8. Hot Press
    80
    Lucinda Williams provides instruction for those who feel fucked around and fobbed off at 40-something.
  9. Billboard
    80
    Williams and Elvis Costello get their twang on for the spirited 'Jailhouse Tears,' and a combination of new elements (horns) and powerhouse playing by her touring band Buick 6 bolster the set's emotional heft.
  10. Hartford Courant
    80
    Little Honey is easily Williams' least depressing album in years, which doesn't sound like much of a compliment until you consider that she sounds downright happy on some of these tunes for the first time in, well, maybe ever.
  11. Blender
    70
    Despite the metaphysical yet conversational "Knowing" and a sexed-up title track that begins with his come in her hair, she doesn't offer enough evidence that her new love is any realer than all the others she's exulted and struggled through in eight albums going back to 1979.
  12. Tiny Mix Tapes
    70
    With Little Honey Williams has once again assured her fanbase that she is incapable of releasing an album that is anything less than collection-worthy and wholly listenable.
  13. Slant Magazine
    70
    'Real Love' is the first of a number of raucous tracks on the very good, though a tad uneven, Little Honey.
  14. PopMatters
    70
    So while there are a few more missteps here than we're used to seeing from our beloved Lucinda, for the most part, her music has survived that awful, awful curse of falling in love.
  15. Entertainment Weekly
    67
    And though those positive vibes yield some correspondingly fun tunes, the disc feels a bit underwritten at times.
  16. Mojo
    60
    Little Honey is, then, a something for everyone offering. And a few will be disappointed. [Nov 2008, p.104]
    All this publication's reviews
  17. All Music Guide
    60
    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.
  18. NOW Magazine
    60
    Williams does sound inspired, and there's an energetic current running through Little Honey that was missing on previous records.
  19. Observer Music Monthly
    60
    The happy-in-love rockers are doggedly inessential, but ballads such as 'The Knowing' and 'Plan to Marry' redress the balance beautifully.
  20. Pitchfork
    57
    While Williams generally sticks to her strengths and suppresses most of her more unsavory musical habits, she maintains her curious reliance on tacky AABB rhyme schemes and lyrical clichés.
  21. The New York Times
    50
    When she's hurting, she can still sear. [But] too often here, though, Ms. Williams gets bogged down turning her magnifying glass back on music making.
  22. Q Magazine
    40
    For such a distinctive voice, disappointingly run of the mill. [Nov 2008, p.123]
    All this publication's reviews
  23. Boston Globe
    40
    For an artist whose reputation for painstaking perfectionism and poetic acumen is legendary, Little Honey is too much saccharine and not enough substance.
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