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Home > Austin Music Source > Archives > 2008 > October > 13 > Entry
CD reviews: Lucinda Williams, Todd Snider and Ben Folds
Brian K. Diggs AMERICAN-STATESMAN
Lucinda Williams
‘Little Honey’
(Lost Highway)
Like most folks, Lucinda Williams is happiest when she’s … how to put this delicately … gettin’ some.
She’s spent most of her career mourning men who have wronged her, her bad luck with men and various ways men have let her down. Not that she hasn’t gotten a wealth of excellent material out of it, but let’s not kid ourselves. There’s a point at which you have to wonder just how bad her taste in men is and whether she’s ever going to snap out of it. Add death to that, as in last year’s “West,” and you wonder if she’s ever going to be happy.
No more, apparently. In a stable relationship with manager Tom Overby, Williams is suddenly producing the highest-octane music of her career. “Little Honey,” out Tuesday cranks out rocker after rocker, including an album closing cover of AC/DC’s “It’s a Long Way to the Top.” Gone is most of the moping, replaced with love and lust. Lots of lust. “You squeeze my peaches” she belts on “Real Love,” a decent song that I nevertheless wished was a cover of the Mary J. Blige classic of the same name. “Now I got your sweetness/ all up in my hair” she howls on “Honey Bee” — um, thanks for that, Lu.
She calms down a bit on “Plan to Marry,” which makes a case for love “when leaders can’t be trusted/ Heroes have let us down.” Elvis Costello moans along on “Jailhouse Blues.” “Well Well Well” is a leftover from ‘92, while “Circles and X’s” and “Wishes Were Horses” date from the 1980s, when Williams’ slow-burn country-folk was defining what became alt-country.
Especially for a gal who made her bones on being all literary ‘n’ all, her lyrics can scan as lazy by half: see also “Honey bee, I swear/ we make quite a pair” and “You tried to steal my truck but/ that’s not what this is about.” Ouch.
The epic “Little Rock Star” cautions the Amy Winehouses and Pete Dohertys of the pop world that their death wish is showing. But most of the time the deaths she’s singing about are the little French kind and that’s a lot more fun.
Recommended: “Wishes Were Horses,” “Little Rock Star” — Joe Gross
Todd Snider
‘Peace Queer’
(Aimless)
Todd Snider’s “The Devil You Know” — the songwriter’s most seamless weave of sketch comedy and social commentary yet — captured a deeply troubled American spirit. The 2006 album’s key political fulcrum: “You Got Away With It.” While the more indelible morality play “Happy New Year” filtered sunlight through a doublewide, Snider’s acidic presidential satire stationed only thunderclouds. Working class anthems like “Looking for a Job” and the title track deepened the grays.
Look left: Snider’s astonishing reinvention of Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Fortunate Son” extends that disillusioned labyrinth. Boy, talk about raw anguish. Cupping a plagued harp, Snider blows a thousand combat wounds straight back into the heart of wartime darkness. The abyss beckons. Haunted morning rises. There is, of course, no resolution. Instead, Snider simply gives pollutants room to multiply, leveling little judgment as his beliefs belly up.
“I may share my opinions with you,” he explains later. “(But) I don’t share them because I think they’re smart or because I think you need to know them. I share them because they rhyme.” The barefoot broadcaster alternately reinforces blue-collar snapshots with roadhouse rock (“Stuck on the Corner”), summery swamp grooves (“The Ballad of Cape Henry,” with Patty Griffin) and staccato blues (“Mission Accomplished”). “I’m so turned around, I could calm up a riot,” he sings. “Fighting for peace is like screaming for quiet.”
Similarly loping wordplay energizes companion pieces “Is This Thing Working?” and “Is This Thing On?,” but neither particularly resonates. (Though Snider’s recitation of the latter was fall-down hilarious last week at the Cactus Cafe.) No matter. Download this robust EP free at the singer’s Web site (www.toddsnider.net) throughout October. “I only want to sell this to people who have heard it and want it for sure,” Snider told the Statesman recently. “My friends tell me this record isn’t as ‘political’ as I say it is, which makes me happy. Most political singers seem like folk Nazis to me.”
Recommended: “Fortunate Son,” “The Ballad of Cape Henry,” “Ponce of the Flaming Peace Queer” — Brian T. Atkinson
Ben Folds
‘Way to Normal’
(Sony)
When Ben Folds leaked “fake” versions of songs from “Way to Normal” that he and his band wrote and recorded within the space of eight hours at a studio in Dublin last summer, the natural assumption was that the actual “Way to Normal” tracks would surpass their surprisingly decent joke counterparts.
But many of the songs on “Way to Normal” improve little on the craftsmanship or lyricism of the fake tracks, so the album just feels lazy. The fake version of “(Expletive) Went Nuts,” for example, tells the story of a guy whose liberal girlfriend takes too many drugs and begins ranting at a corporate Christmas party. The real version tells the similar story of a girlfriend who lashes out inappropriately after getting dumped.
Still, the album has its high points. “You Don’t Know Me,” a jazzy duet with Regina Spektor, features bright horn and string sections beneath irresistible harmonies lined with simple but poignant lyrics about the fleeting nature of relationships. “Brainwascht,” on the other hand, sees Folds’ quirky humor at its best, as he challenges a fellow songwriter to a dance-off in response to a mean-spirited pop song jab. Other songs, like “Dr. Yang,” harken back to the raw energy of Folds’ earliest days with the Five.
But whether the songs on “Way to Normal” hit or miss, the refreshing thing about Folds is his humility.
“If this record is great, it is a testament to the quality of the people in my life,” Folds writes in the album’s liner notes. “I will however take responsibility for any possible overlooked moments of less-than-greatness that may exist on this album.”
Recommended: “You Don’t Know Me,” “Brainwascht” — Alex Daniel
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