On "I Do," she says, "Love is a game" - one track later, "Love Is a Garden." Even the girl-power anthem "Stronger Woman" doesn't promise much: "I'm going to love myself more than anyone else." Jewel, prepare to be zinged again.The stunning singer-guitarist-songwriter’s genre is a bit hard to pin down because she’s shifted so much from album to album. Jewel contributes bland pickup-truck philosophy about relationships in cutesy little-girl vocals that rarely show off her voice's texture (though, yes, there's some yodeling).
But the album is overcrowded by placid soft-rock tunes like "Two Become One" and "Anyone But You" with schmaltzy choruses and flavorless piano-laden verses. The title track strikes a raw nerve with its slow, stripped-down arrangement. Co-producer John Rich of Big and Rich provides plenty of slide guitar, banjo plucks and fiddle, but no memorable melodies. But the album's biggest setback, other than the fact that its title sounds like a Neutrogena product, is that Jewel doesn't call upon the gritty storytelling of a real Nashville star. So Perfectly Clear, her first proper country record, should have been her true calling to an art that's one part twang to two parts self-mythology. Jewel's life has always sounded like a country song: Raised by her cowboy dad and discovered while she was homeless, she went on to sell 12 million copies of her debut, only to become the butt of countless zingers. Such details might be a deal-breaker for some, but Jewel feels and sounds comfortable here, something that will surely help her shift units with this record and will likely give her a long career, if she so chooses. So it has the form and feel, but the devil is in the details, the songs that never quite hook and sometimes serve up some patently absurd moments, usually in the form of her overheated lyrics (which also betray how un-country she really is). This doesn't necessarily make Perfectly Clear a "better" record - some of those albums were pretty good even if they didn't adhere to the Jewel myth - but it does mean it feels more like the Jewel that everybody came to love back in 1995, which is what it was intended to do. This brings Perfectly Clear much closer to Pieces of You than any album she's made since, as it's filled with poppy, simple songs about relationships, never bogging down in portentous pretension, literary preoccupations, or glossy pop as she has in every record since. She's a folksinger, soaring with her long, lyrical phrases instead of aiming for the gut, something that grates when she does attempt something uptempo but she wisely avoids this pitfall through much of the album, choosing to dole out ballads and midtempo pop. The setting may be country - courtesy of producer John Rich, whose production recalls his hazy, soft solo album rather than the gonzo strut of Big & Rich - but Jewel is not a country singer, no matter how often she affects a twang. There are fiddles and steel guitars threaded throughout the album but their presence is nearly subliminal at most points they're felt, not heard, just enough to give it a country feel. Like Bon Jovi before her and Jessica Simpson after, Jewel's country move is more about marketing than music, an adjustment that puts her in line with adults raised on Pieces of You but more likely to listen to Brad Paisley than Feist. Such whiplash changes in direction are bound to raise suspicion, but Jewel wears her country threads better than her diva hand-me-downs, possibly because it suits her mythical back-story of living out of the back of the truck but it's also a smaller leap from folk to country.at least in theory, that is, as Perfectly Clear isn't quite a full-fledged country album. It isn't hard to view Jewel's country music makeover on Perfectly Clear with a mildly cynical eye, especially as it follows her dance-pop shakeup on 2003's 0304 by a mere five years.
0 kommentar(er)
