Category Archives: 2008 music reviews

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Lucinda Williams – Little Honey

littlehoneyLucinda Williams has been on a tear in recent years. After releasing a total of four albums during the first 18 years of her career, she has released another four in the past seven. Her latest, Little Honey, follows right on the heels of 2007’s West.

Her most notorious dry spell was the six years between Sweet Old World and Car Wheels on a Gravel Road, when her perfectionism got the better of her and she refused to release Car Wheels until it was just right. And I can’t argue with that, because it is a perfect album… one of the few in my collection about which I’ll say that without reservation. But still, six years is a long time.

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Ben Folds – Way to Normal

You know the old cliche that “so-and-so’s worst album is better than just about everything else out there” — well, Ben Fold’s new album puts that concept to the test.

Way to Normal is definitely Folds’ worst album, but it isn’t bad by any means. It just feels like a big step down from the wonderful Songs for Silverman and Rockin’ the Suburbs — not to mention his work with Ben Folds Five.

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Fleet Foxes – Fleet Foxes

I have a rule of thumb that I listen to any new album at least four times before writing a review (or, prior to having this blog, before I formed a definite opinion of it in my mind). I’m not one of those people who can hear a song or an album and know instantly how I feel about it. I know if I like the sound or not, but I don’t know if it will be something I’ll know and love until I’ve lived with it for awhile.

But sometimes I can’t make it to four listens. And that’s the case with the eponymous debut CD by a much-hyped group called Fleet Foxes.

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Sugarland – Love On the Inside

I always rejected the sterotypical country music genre, the crying-in-my-boots Garth Brooks and Toby Keith kind of thing. But I’ve realized over the past ten years or so that it really is just a stereotype, and there’s a wide variety of country music as good as anything else I listen to.

It probably started with Lyle Lovett, who is certainly many things, but a country music singer is very high on the list. And it branched out from there to include k.d. lang, The Dixie Chicks, Loretta Lynn, Ryan Adams, Neko Case, Tift Merritt, Lucinda Williams and on and on. Some of those artists are more “country” than others, but they all prove how effective the genre can be.

My latest country success story is Sugarland, a duo who are currently lighting up both country and pop charts with their new album Love on the Inside and its first single ‘All I Want To Do.’

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She & Him – Volume One

The track record of actors turned musicians is not a strong one. Eddie Murphy, Bruce Willis, Lindsay Lohan, Juliette Lewis — crap, all of it. It doesn’t seem to work the other way around, though. Plenty of musicians (especially rappers) make fine actors. I guess singing is already a form of acting, while the reverse isn’t true.

I mention this to point out why the success of She & Him is a very special achievement. Zooey Deschanel (Almost Famous, Elf, All the Real Girls) is the “she” in She & Him, while the “him” is alternative singer-songwriter M. Ward. But the band’s name is deceiving, because this is truly Deschanel’s work. She wrote all the original songs and sings every track, while Ward handles production and plays the guitar.

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