Sheryl Crow (1996)

09/24/1998 3:00 AM, Yahoo! Music
Billy Altman

Talk about water under the bridge. The last time Sheryl Crow made an album, hardly anyone except her label even knew who she was--and even they mainly knew her as this onetime backup singer for Michael Jackson and Don Henley who recorded an entire debut album and then talked them into scrapping the whole thing because it wasn't really "her"--which, presumably, Tuesday Night Music Club, Crow's completely different and official 1993 debut album, really was. The only problem was that there were so many different Sheryl Crows vying for attention on that album--the life-hardened Crow ("What I Can Do For You"), the vulnerable Crow ("Are You Man Enough"), the straight-shooting Crow ("No One Said It Would Be Easy") and, of course, the streetsmart hipster Crow ("All I Wanna Do")--that it was hard to figure out just what the composite sketch actually looked like. She got humongous in '94, toured a lot in '95 and now, nearly three full years later, we've finally got a follow-up with which to further ponder the question: Just who is Sheryl Crow, anyway?

Well, fellow listeners, the joke continues to be on us, because damned if there's any kind of discernible personality coming to meet us even an eighth of the way on this album. Having gone from below sea level to mountain top in one fell swoop, this very good singer and not-so-very-good songwriter here presents 13 tunes that, as written, no doubt make sense to her. And, considering that no one is likely to tell someone who's just sold more than a few million units what to do, they presumably make sense to whoever is in charge of such things at her record company. All I can say is that, while most of these tracks do seem to be about specific things, I personally cannot fathom what most of those things are. And, even on those rare occasions that I can figure then out, there's hardly anything to actually react to or absorb.

Take, for example, "The Book," which is about a fiction writer that Crow's protagonist (since she's a songwriter, we'll give her the benefit of the doubt) has had a fling with--only to find out that he spills all the intimate details of their relationship in his next book. Basically, she's mad and that's it: no catharsis, no insights ("The love you once made can't be undone"--heavy ), no real anything. Or, "Home," in which a fading love is regretted over with little in the way of explanation of why the love began , what it meant or why it's dying.

In virtually all these songs we find ourselves (as they're fond of saying in these days of plentiful self-expression--and precious little actual communication) in the moment. And for Sheryl Crow in 1996, those moments involve a lot of meandering tough/vulnerable/straight-shooting/streetsmart/hipster talk about showbiz ("Superstar"), stardom ("A Change") and weird friends ("Oh Marie") to no apparent point and with no apparent point of view. ("Impressionistic" will no doubt be the operative word used to describe these works). To be honest, though, why shouldn't Sheryl Crow just sing her heart out about stuff that she wants to sing about, even if it doesn't make much sense to anyone else but her? Hey, she's earned the right to do so. But that doesn't mean we'll keep listening--especially when we still don't even know who we're listening to.