There’s a handful of recording artists who never disappoint–well, make that almost never–and Lucinda Williams is long-time a member of this exclusive club. Since her self-titled third album, she’s never let me down. Even when the roots contingent bitched about West, I appreciated what she was doing and admired how she pushed past the genre stances that had endeared her to fans. And, given the polarizing affect of West, the country-rock regrouping of Little Honey, Williams latest release, is its least surprising attribute. In a way, it recalls World Without Tears–a similar retreat into the tried and true after her more experimental Essence. But where World Without Tears left Williams’ considerable songwriting talents intact, she arrives at Little Honey without the baggage that’s provided the inspiration for her best work.

There’s a fine EP buried in Little Honey–but unfortunately, there’s also that other 40 minutes of music . . . The songs neatly fall into four categories: Lucinda In Love, Lucinda Dispensing Advice To Other Pop Stars, Lucinda Classics Old and New, and, well, a Lucinda/Elvis Costello comedy routine. Even though it physically hurts to admit this, the problem is that most of the new material is the stuff of B-sides and bonus tracks.

The quality of the Lucinda-In-Love material suggests that Paul McCartney was right all those years ago–it’s a world filled with love songs that are indisputably silly. And while I’m pleased for Lucinda these days, there’s good reason why great art rarely (if ever) flows from Being Happy. BecauseHappy has few nuances and it also lacks drama–which is bad news if you’re trying to write four-minute lyrical narratives that evolve across their verses and recontextualized choruses.

The tracks where Lucinda Dispenses Pop-Star Advice are problematic in two ways: First, she’s not exactly the poster girl for smart music-business moves, and second, apart from silly love songs, is there anything more boring than dispatches from the echo chamber of rock stardom? “Running On Empty,” “Tenth Avenue Freeze Out,” “How Do You Sleep?”–we get it. Fame Has A Price, aka It Hasn’t Been Easy. I’m never sure what to make of this type of song, because beneath the graphic, salacious details, lurks all the complexity of a Lifetime Network movie. The brilliance of Amy Winehouse’s “Rehab” is her undermining of self-pity–which is why Little Honey will never displace Back To Black at the top of my frequent-play list.

“Jailhouse Tears,” the Lucinda-And-Elvis Standup Routine, amuses on the first two or three listenings, after which the song begins to irritate in the manner of any novelty number (even if you appreciate the implicit Tammy-and-George joke).

The good news is that the remaining songs keep Little Honey from totally disappointing. They comprise a powerful, virtual EP anchored by the heartbreaking “If Wishes Were Horses.” There’s also the infectious, radio-ready “Real Love,” the somber “Heaven Blues,” and “Tears of Joy”–the one silly love song that transcends itself.

Another plus is the paradoxical fact that Little Honey is a near-perfect set of recordings: the live-in-studio production is superlative, the band’s playing is spectacular and William’s vocals are among her best. The impressively austere black-and-white art direction is also excellent. If only the lyrics consistently rose to the level of the production, performances and package.

The final problem of Little Honey is its numbing length. Most classic, vinyl-age pop records weighed-in at somewhere between 34 to 42 minutes. And just as the three- to five-minute capacity of the 45 codified length expectations for singles, 40-something minutes still seems “right” for a set of studio pop songs, even in a digital age. A version of Little Honey less self-indulgently long would have eliminated the water-treading redundancy of “Little Rock Star,” “Rarity” and “It’s a Long Way To the Top:” At 42 minutes, chances are are good that only one of the three would ended up in the collection. Pop Darwinism would have rightly eliminated the weaker two. (Similarly, the ratio of love songs would also have been beneficially pruned.)

But despite all this criticism, I suspect that Little Honey will easily out-sell the more adventurous and experimental West. Which is a shame, since Williams will be encouraged to write even sillier love songs, more navel-gazing rock-star ballads and–worst of all–commit comedy again. And me, well, I’d rather have gone farther down the path that produced “Are You Alright?” and “Learning How To Live,” instead of having to brace myself for Lu and El doing a twangy cover of “I Got You Babe” while broadly winking at one another. To paraphrase something else from West, ‘I don’t want to wrap my head around that . . .’