Sheryl Crow: Detours
Monday, 18 Feb 2008 21:58
Sheryl Crow takes a politically-minded detour on her new album.
A&M Records, out February 18th.
In a nutshell...
Another album George Bush will be religiously avoiding.
What's it all about?
In the words of Sheryl Crow, Detours is "the most honest record I've ever made". It is also more overtly political than any of her previous five offerings and reflects her recent penchant for public activism. Fifteen tracks fuse her trademark country/folk/rock-pop style with new sounds and effects, and lyrics range from unabashed Bush-bashing over Iraq to subtler attempts to engage with climate change, cultural disharmonies and dwindling oil reserves. The second half also offers several more modest musings on love and loss.
Who's it by?
Sheryl Crow broke through with debut studio album Tuesday Night Music Club in 1993, and proved a ten million copy seller and triple Grammy Award winner. The self-titled follow-up album nearly matched its success with two more Grammies, thanks to powerful singles like If It Makes You Happy and Everyday is a Winding Road. Successive albums drew considerably less critical acclaim, and recent years have seen the singer confront cancer and a painful split from lover Lance Armstrong. Detours marks renewed collaboration with Tuesday Night Music Club's production mastermind Bill Bottrell. Now in her mid-40s and a mother, the new album sees Crow broach new topics with a degree of lyrical and musical experimentalism.
As an example...
"The president spoke words of comfort with teardrops in his eyes/ Then he led us as a nation into a war all based on lies." – God Bless This Mess
"If we could only get out of our heads, out of our heads, and into our hearts/Children of Abraham lay down your fears, swallow your tears and look to your heart." – Out of Our Heads
Likelihood of a trip to the Grammys
Neither feelgood enough nor challenging enough to add to her existing showcase of awards.
What the others say
"What she's provided is something grown-up, intellectual and toe-tapping, showing that after 15 years of solo work, she can still be every bit as vibrant and vital as her debut." – BBC
"Because many of these moving lyrics are embedded in lightweight melodies, these songs may not win over detractors." – TheStar.com
So is it any good?
Crow's voice is not the richest and most resonant around, but is at its rugged and punchy best when stretched in anthemic early hits like Run Baby Run and If It Makes You Happy. Elsewhere it is listenable but needs the right vehicle to take off – and much of Detours unfortunately confines her to a vocal comfort zone.
There is certainly a new edge to the lyrics. In C'mon C'mon (2002) she was telling us to soak up the sun and lighten up; now the sun is the "sweltering" catalyst to London oil rioting (Gasoline) and the "waning" witness to a ravaged earth (Shine Over Babylon). Opening track God Bless This Mess is a gentle forlorn lament about the ravages of 9/11 and Iraq - and its melody could be mistaken for a subtly emotive Vietnam protest song.
Tracks two and four raise the intensity in different ways: Shine Over Babylon’s verses paint a vivid picture of a bizarrely drained global landscape, while its chorus soars with unifying intent. And Peace Be Upon Us reaches out for unity and enriching multi-culturalism, sensitively evolving into poignant Arabic interludes that echo Sting's Desert Rose. Gasoline's roguish Wild West twang is then interestingly applied to social breakdown in 2017, while Out of Our Heads' hippy singalong vibe adds a new dimension.
But the stand-out track may well be the digitally released single Love is Free – which has no political undertones. Instead it has a cadillac, some bourbon and all the other ingredients of the catchy, user-free country lilts that have served the Counting Crows equally well. Yet here and across much of the second half of Detours, Crow only provides glimpses of the confident, carefree, sun-drenched anthems that her fans wound their windows down to cruise through the 90s. With album six Crow is still flying but fails to soar as high as she has in the past.
6/10
Nick Jacobs
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