Last year during an unprecedented live tour, Lucinda Williams recreated five of her classic albums in their entirety. Were she to try that concept again, Little Honey wouldn’t make the cut. With several tracks devoted to finding true love—great for personal fulfillment, if not for artistic development—a gal who cut her teeth on shattered dreams and spat out broken hearts was bound to get a little lazy rolling around in all that bliss. Still, it’s a fine album for the iPod age, studded with flashes of brilliance that stand up with the best of her work.

Williams rocks hard out of the gate with “Real Love,” capturing the first giddy flush of romance: “You squeeze my peaches / send me postcards of girls on beaches.” Later, she gets down to business in “Honey Bee,” using her sexiest 5 a.m. voice to vamp “your sweetness all up in my hair.” Yowser! But while the true-love rockers ring true, sentimental ballads “Knowing” and “Tears of Joy”—in which she pledges “I’ll be your woman / be your everything / you’ll be my baby / be my king”—seem more suited to a suburban wedding reception.

Luckily, love ain’t the only thing she’s selling here. “Jailhouse Tears,” a campy trailer-trash duet with Elvis Costello, provides just the right dose of comic relief. Tabloid readers will have a field day guessing which bad-behaving celeb serves as the model for “Little Rock Star,” a lovely elegy for death-wishers who fly too close to the flame. Even more compelling is “Rarity.” Buried deep inside the album, the song paints a vivid picture of a wildly talented singer-songwriter who’s impossible to cage or sell. But that doesn’t stop the industry from trying: “They suck the gristle off the bones of your art.” Williams should know; she’s fended off the jackals all her life while fighting her own inner demons, and always come out on top.

If anyone’s earned the sigh of relief that comes with finding your soulmate, it’s Lucinda Williams. But a little of the mushy stuff goes a long way, and provides scant solace for the bitter-hearted. Next time out, she’ll likely be past the honeymoon stage. Meanwhile, download the keepers, like her scorching version of AC/DC’s “It’s a Long Way to the Top.”