You can see her singing on a 1960s TV set made to resemble the Midwestern plains, all fake trees and tumbleweed, and a cardboard cut-out moon. You can see her performing blind and oblivious in the midst of a saloon-bar brawl, strumming and humming to herself while fists are thrown. You can see her as some speechless, shy introvert, only experiencing love through romance novels and crackly old country records, playing songs in her bedroom that no one will ever hear.
Whatever images Honey for Dinner conjures of its author, they're all fascinatingly out-of-time. While anyone with a four-track and a few Robert Johnson records can feign some form of retro authenticity, it's much harder to mine the styles on display here and still sound like an intriguing, individual artist in your own right. Produced by Will Oldham's brother Paul and featuring Papa M's Dave Pajo on bass, drums, and banjo, Peggy Honeywell's curious debut collection of delta blues, bluegrass, and classic country yodel achieves this better than most.
Still, despite the noteworthy guest appearances, Honey for Dinner lacks any kind of technical proficiency. Opening shot "Sympathy Date" alternates between sharp, graceless guitar jabs and eloquent wisps of slowed-down melody. Pajo backs it all with the barest of banjo lines. Musically, the track is crude and brash, but by lacing it with the endearingly self-deprecating lyric, "I took advantage of your kind, kind heart/ 'Cause I'm really not as smart," Honeywell comes off coy and sweetly bashful.
Just past a pair of 50s blues 'n' boogie pastiches lies a brace of gorgeous ballads: "Hug My Heart" and "Moon". The former is a fluttering heartbeat of fixation and longing, while the latter's cries of "I don't wanna live on the moon" rail against green-eyed ambition, reveling in simplicity and home comforts. Honeywell's voice displays straight-edge honesty and emotes with an almost-weeping wilt, providing these tracks with even greater allure.
Of course, while the ensemble's technical incompetence can be quite charming, its limited musical pallet proves somewhat frustrating. It's baffling that Pajo is sidelined here, given his talent for arrangement; he offers only the slightest flicker of bass or slide-guitar, allowing Honeywell's clumsy three-chord strum to drive the record. As a result, the title track and "Bower Bird" are stunted by a lack of variety-- and clocking in at just over 20 minutes, the record does seem somewhat slight as a result.
The litmus test for whether you'll enjoy or despise this album lies in the closing cover of the Elvis Presley standard "All Shook Up". Swapping rock 'n' roll stomp for a folksy flutter of panicked plucking and off-beat singing, Honeywell's version casts love as less the adrenal sensation that pulsated through Elvis' original, and more her own flush of blushes and half-stuttered sentences. If you enjoy watching your love songs struggle to express the depth of emotion by which the singer is tormented-- offering only a glimpse of the passion exploding underneath-- you may find Honeywell's "All Shook Up" completely entrancing. But Honey for Dinner's self-imposed musical limitations do keep it from being something truly special, and as such, the album simply stands as a charming, impulsive, and beguiling collection of awkward bluegrass and mannered southern strum.
