Spirit Reviews & Blurbs

Eye Magazine

Jewel is pictured 10 times in the CD artwork of Spirit, including tasteful shots of her hands (clean) and feet (greasy). She has inherited Madonna's producer Patrick Leonard, who gussies up her style until the petite Alaskan folkie sounds one-part Sarah McLachlan and two-parts Judy Collins. There's nothing as unnerving as her crooning "Jew, Jew..." on the anti-racism title track of her debut Pieces of You, though overweight teenagers who are nervous at public pools will be happy to know that they have her sympathy in "Fat Boy." If she's right that "What's Simple Is True," then Jewel is the most virtuous woman since Joan of Arc.

Jan/Feb 99 Real Groove (New Zealand)

Jewel Kilcher is a very serious young woman. Her lyrics reflect a persona much older than her 24 years. On “Spirit”’s opening track, “Deep Water”, she advises that: “When you’re standing in deep water… it’s nothing without love.” On the album’s first single, “Hands”, she gushes: “If I could tell the world just one thing, it would be that we’re all OK.” At this point I had expected to write a cynical, sneering review, but then I realised, “Hey, these songs aren’t bad!”

I wasn’t particularly enthralled by Jewel’s 10 million selling debut album, but as earnest and overwrought as “Spirit” gets in places, it does carry a certain charm. The production by Patrick Leonard is understated and sensitive. The musical backing, especially by acoustic guitarist Jude Cole complements Jewel’s melodic, introspective tunes perfectly. There are some minor annoyances such as the multiple use of a flame as a metaphor for the human spirit (it shows up in at least five songs), her cloying sensitivity in “Fat Boy” and her vocal swoops over several octaves within one word on “Enter From The East”. But the pluses far outnumber the negatives. In addition to “Hands” there are at least four more possible singles including the more musically muscular “Down So Long” and the strident call to arms of “Life Uncommon”. Jewel asks us to, “Lend our voices to sounds of freedom” and, hey, I was about ready to sign up. Peter, Paul & Mary can’t be far behind. Uh oh, I’m getting’ in that cynical mood again. Before it takes me over completely, let me say, “Spirit” is a pretty good record.

E! Online

"A Gem Dandy... Just when everything seemed right with the world, it turns out Jewel isn't simply another dippy hippie chick. Despite lyrics like "What's simple is true" (attention Jewel: the dream where I bag Bridget Fonda with a croquet mallet is exquisitely simple, but as far as I can tell you, not true), the former street urchin seems to have grown a brain. In the December 24 Rolling Stone, Jewel discusses quantum physics and intelligently rebuffs her critics. "I [keep] trying to figure out why people in the press thought I was stupid," she says. "I've noticed a belief [among the press] that optimism stems from naïveté. I believe optimism is a choice. Cynicism isn't smarter, it's just safer." Happily, Profound Jewel gives way to Dopey Jewel a short time later, setting the world's axis straight again. "[Jelly Bellys] should be its own food group," she muses. "All those flavors and colors. Then you start combining them--cream soda with a cherry on top, or a juicy pear with a strawberry." Ahhhh. That's better. And a happy 1999 to all. "

Q, Jan 1999

Standout Tracks: Kiss The Flame, Jupiter, Do You.

SOMEWHERE AROUND the middle of 1997, long years of beyond-the-call-of-duty touring finally paid off for wholesome, crooked-toothed Swiss-American folkie Jewel Kilcher. Her low key, long-before-released debut album Pieces Of You had turned her - almost imperceptibly - into a major star in her homeland.

Between then and the release of this inevitably high-profile follow-up, the young Alaskan has found the time and inspiration to publish a best-selling book of poetry. A Night Without Armor, and, by all accounts, penned enough new songs for three or four more records. She has also enlisted the keyboard-playing and knob-twiddling skills of veteran pop producer and long-time Madonna collaborator Patrick Leonard to help turn a sound that was born to play coffee shop gigs into something capable of withstanding the inevitable round of stadium concerts.

The good news for the legions of word-of-mouth fans who bought album one is that Leonard has made no attempt to turn his New Age folk babe into a poptastic material girl. Spirit is still very recognisably a Jewel record as her clear, tender and playfully acrobatic vocal remains firmly to the fore over a series of obliquely melodic, deftly woven and densely wordy tunes.

The small band of session musicians enlisted to flesh out Jewel's strongly acoustic style remain, for the most part, modestly in the background and only occasionally does an over-fancy piece of fretwork or some OTT bass and percussion disturb the quietly established equilibrium.

The songs themselves also cover familar Jewel territory, concerning themselves by and large with strongly personal but thoroughly American explorations of love, loneliness and the need for us all to help each other out more. The repeated images of love as a bolt of lightning, of empty rooms and her strange obsession with her own hands, which surface amid the sometimes poetic pschyobabble could become a little tedious for listeners whose appreciation doesn't come shrinkwrapped, but songs such as the flirty, funny Jupiter and the dark but spunky Do You can't help but be easily likeable.

Thus far, it seems, success hasn't compromised Jewel: her kooky-cool sound can still charm the pants off you one moment and make you feel like chundering on its sickly-sweet sincerity the next.

Dave Roberts 3/5

Winnipeg Free Press, Nov. 26

Jewel/Spirit (2.5 stars)

"Um, like gag me with a fistful of Lilith Fair ticket stubs and Briore pimple thingies --- there's only so much breathy, lightweight folk-pop a human being can take. Whatever charm this likable but drippy Alaskan brought to Pieces Of You is erased by this incredibly sappy rehash of a CD, whose only display of growth is a layering of keyboards that evokes Sarah McLachlan. All the tunes are solid -- the sentiment, however well intentioned, is unbearable."

SD Union Tribune, 12-Nov-1998 Thursday, Karla Peterson , ARTS WRITER

Her profile is so high and her presence so pervasive, it seems impossible that Jewel is just now releasing the second album of her career. Hasn't she been around forever already? Shouldn't the boxed set be coming out by now?

Like fellow phenom Alanis Morissette, Jewel has become somewhat larger than life, and expectations have ballooned accordingly. Her aura is way out of proportion with respect to her age and experience. So before tackling her new album, a reality check is in order.

When Jewel's debut album was released three years ago, a choir of angels did not signal the coming of the Next Big Thing. "Pieces of You" was a nicely crafted piece of folksy pop. The writing was shaky, but the sentiments were sincere. And the voice was striking.

All in all, it was an extremely promising debut. But somewhere along the way, this modest album became a blockbuster, selling more than 8 million copies nationwide and turning the local singer-songwriter into a much-photographed, exhaustively chronicled pop star.

These days, the 24-year-old Jewel is a crossover icon. Earlier this year, a book of her poetry made The New York Times best-seller list. Next year, she will be co-starring in a major motion picture ("Absence of Fear") by director Ang Lee, of "Sense and Sensibility" fame. And when her album is released on Tuesday, people will be expecting very big things. Chances are, they might be disappointed.

Which is not to say "Spirit" is a disappointing album. In terms of exhibiting artistic growth, prodding at boundaries and exploring new horizons, "Spirit" does pretty much everything a second album is supposed to do. In most of the ways that count, it is the work of a stronger, more mature artist. It isn't a huge leap into the pop stratosphere, but it is a confident step forward.

Now that Jewel is on top of the world, however, people might be expecting something a bit loftier. And judging from the save-the-world nature of some of the lyrics, Jewel does have more than a little swami in her. But the album's best songs are the ones that don't try to justify the hoopla, and "Spirit's" greatest triumphs are in some of its smallest moments.

To save your skeptical soul, skip "Innocence Maintained" and "Life Uncommon," two well-meaning inspirational tunes that collapse under the weight of their own good intentions. If consciousness-raising is what you're after, you'll find it in "Deep Water" and "Hands," which feature glowing vocals and plain-spoken messages that come from the heart rather than the self-help aisle.

There is nothing here as loose and cheeky as "V-12 Cadillac," (from last year's "MOM II: Music for Our Mother Ocean" benefit album), and the album could have used the break. But the lightly seductive "Jupiter" swings like a hammock in a Baja breeze, and after a positively Dylan-esque first verse, "Do You" eases into a live-wire groove that inspires the most warm-blooded singing of Jewel's recorded career.

Reverently produced by Madonna cohort Patrick Leonard, "Spirit" is tasteful to a fault. His discretion works beautifully on the limpid "What's Simple Is True" and "Hands" (which Leonard co-wrote), but some of the songs beg for a jolt of tension. "Barcelona" and "Enter From the East" find Jewel creeping toward moodier, more adult territory, only to be reigned in by a squadron of polite guitars and fluttering synthesizers.

Jewel's voice is still a few miles ahead of her songwriting, and though the wince-factor is lower this time around, there are still some clunkers clomping about. When the vocals soar on the lusty "Down So Long," it's doubtful anyone will notice the lyrical potholes. But all the gorgeous singing in the world can't redeem such lines as Hitler loved little blue-eyed boys / And it caused him to hate ("Innocence Maintained"), and No longer lend your strength to that which you wish to be free from ("Life Uncommon").

If her biggest sin is taking herself too seriously, Jewel deserves respect for caring enough to use her fame as a pulpit. The people who thought she was too precious the first time around aren't likely to be converted, but the legions who found comfort in her hearth-and-home wisdom will find solace in "Spirit." They will also find a gifted singer attempting to blossom into a full-fledged artist. Jewel isn't there yet, but it is a pleasure watching her grow.

UK Times, Nov 13th, 1999; 'A gem, plain and simple. -Jewel sparkles with spirit.

There are moments when listening to 'Spirit', the follow-up to Jewel's ten million-selling debut, 'Pieces of you', that you realise where everyone else has been going wrong.

Recent albums by Alanis Morrisette, Tori Amos, Maddona and even Joni Mitchell have made heavy work of the vogue for turning self-analysis into song. But the 24-year- old Alaskan star converts her most personal feelings into words and music of much greater emotional resonance than her singer-songwriter confreres simply by having the good sense to keep her material focused on the basics. 'What's simple is true' - a pretty, folk-based tune with a lyric that speaks in a universal language - could well be the album's manifesto. There is, too, the engaging sense of an artist who is prepared to seek the solutions to the worries of her world instead of merely cataloguing them. The religious undercurrents of songs such as 'Hands', 'Innocence maintained' and 'Life uncommon' will not be to everyone's liking. "To be forgiven we must first believe in sin," she sternly notes. But her constant cry if optimism in the face of adversity is a welcome antidote to the to the spiritual malaise that nowadays seems to be the norm. Quite apart from the purity and depth of Jewel's vision, though, 'Spirit' is about the pleasure of hearing an unadorned, bell-like voice in the service of good songs.

It's a big leap from living in your van as a teenager to being the moral conscience of your generation. Yet that's the path being carved by the quietly ambitious, unashamedly idealistic Jewel; the Alaskan-born singer-songwriter whose debut album sold 8 million copies and made her an icon to wandering youth.

Jewel wrote that debut, ''Pieces of You,'' as a 19-year-old who had moved from Alaska to an itinerant life in San Diego. The album produced three huge hit singles: ''You Were Meant for Me,'' ''Who Will Save Your Soul,'' and ''Foolish Games.''

Now 24, Jewel returns Tuesday with ''Spirit,'' a softly understated, beguilingly beautiful folk record that blends an ecumenical spirituality with a timeless innocence that makes you wonder how the marketplace will react to it. Jewel's vulnerabilities are revealed, but so are her strengths and commitments to the love, grace, and peace ethic.

A focal track is ''Innocence Maintained,'' in which Jewel intones: ''We've made houses for hatred/It's time we made a place where people's souls may be seen and made safe/Be careful with each other ... for innocence can't be lost, it just needs to be maintained.''

In many hands, Jewel's moralizing might seem corny, but she invests this song and others with a stunning calm. As she told Billboard, ''I wanted to write a record that was an antidote to all the things that made me worry in the world, so that it's comforting somehow.''

She succeeded, for the new record goes right to the heart. ''We've compromised our pride and sacrificed our health/We have to demand more not of each other/But more from ourselves,'' she sings in the opening tune, 'Deep Water.''

Radio singles may be few and far between this time, though ''Hands'' is working its way up the charts with the life-affirming thought: ''In the end only kindness matters ... We are God's eyes, God's hands, God's mind.'' This may not make the album go ka-ching at the cash registers, but it earns respect.

This album is meant to be listened to as a whole. Gently flowing acoustic guitar, played by former Bostonian Jude Cole, (who also has a fine new solo disc out), anchors these fragile, painterly melodies. Other guests include Ednaswap bassist Paul Bushnell, Red Hot Chili Peppers bassist Flea, Afro-Cuban percussionist Luis Conte, pedal steel guitarist Marty Rifkin, and drummer Brian Macleod.

Jewel herself only plays guitar on two tracks, preferring to concentrate on her voice. It has matured and deepened, yet is still capable of a magnificent falsetto on ''Enter from the East,'' an erotic, cello-limned tune where she sings, ''I must have you all to myself/Feel the full weight of your skin.'' A similarly light and airy eroticism turns up on ''Jupiter.''

While Jewel is searching for love, we soon learn it's a love both on the earthy and the spiritual planes. In the elegiac ''Barcelona,'' with Flea adding a subtle bass line, she sings, ''I'm afraid I am alone/Won't somebody please hold me, release me, show me the meaning of mercy.'' Later, in the same song, she asks, ''God, won't you please hold me, release me?''

Above all, these songs are unerringly pretty. Jewel even adds a protest song in ''Life Uncommon,'' and that, too, is sung so prettily that you won't want to rush the barricades after all. Rather, this album makes you want to sit back, contemplate life, and be glad that an artist as compelling as Jewel is willing to bare her soul, in spite of a possible backlash against such idealism.

This story ran on page L03 of the Boston Globe on 11/15/98. © Copyright 1998 Globe Newspaper Company.

Entertainment Weekly ; by David Browne

SEMI-PRECIOUS JEWEL

Where have all the PC folk songs gone? They've been updated in radio-ready form on Spirit, the exceedingly earnest second effort by the exceedingly sensitive Jewel.

As Jewel continually reminds us on her second album, Spirit, Earth is the ultimate house of horrors. It pollutes and poisons our minds, it's populated by bigots and bullies, and it constantly tramples and suppresses our inner beauty. But if we have faith in ourselves and join together, she keeps suggesting, we shall once again overcome and reclaim the purity and essence of life. Really.

Over the past couple decades, musicians who extolled such sentiments were folkie moralists who disregarded materialism and commerciality; they looked and sounded drab. None of those stereotypes apply to Jewel Kilcher, who epitomizes a new breed of contemporary folksinger. She's become her own cottage industry--and what a crowded bungalow it is. Part unplugged balladeer, part multi-platinum pop star, part best-selling poet, part sex symbol, part fledgling movie actress (with a feature-film debut due this spring), she's the '90s face of social consciousness: glamorous, careerist, unabashedly ambitious.

Despite a few memorable moments, like the poignantly descriptive lament "You Were Meant for Me," Pieces of You, her '95 debut, was dominated by wan, precious coffeehouse sermons. Spirit, carefully produced by longtime Madonna cohort Patrick Leonard, represents a major leap in high fidelity. Leonard keeps the focus on Jewel's voice while adding just enough Nutra-folk sweetener--pillow-soft keyboards, softly padding drums--to avoid the drabness of Pieces of You. "Hands," the first single, epitomizes how Leonard achieves a smart balance between acoustic intimacy and radio-friendly gloss. The way Jewel's voice dips from a mountain-stream soprano to a vulnerable lower octave in the chorus demonstrates what a stronger, more confident singer she's become, and how much vocal control she's learned. On the printed page, this ode to keeping the faith makes as much sense as Jewel acting ("My hands are small, I know/Butthey're not yours, they are my own"--huh?). But Jewel sounds as if she believes deeply and strongly in every last syllable.

If Spirit were intended simply as an easy-listening folk-pop balm--which it often winds up being, in lullabies like the self-help ditty "Deep Water" and the enraptured love song "Kiss the Flame"--it would suffice. It's certainly a more pleasing aural experience than the grating cacophony that is the new Alanis Morissette album. But in her role as friend, advisor, lover, and spiritual counselor, Jewel yearns to elevate us--and, in doing so, continually trips herself up.

Jewel is, first off, a jumble of contradictions. She's clearly driven, yet in "Down So Long" (the closest thing to an upbeat number, with a classic-rock feel reminiscent of Tom Petty's "Mary Jane's Last Dance") she complains of her hectic schedule. "Do You," a tract against the superficiality of the world, finds her admonishing certain women--"No more pigtails and pony rides/ They're sophisticated/They sip on lattes"--who resemble none other than fans of Jewel and her Lilith Fair peers.

As that song reveals, there's an ultrathin line between simplicity and naivete, and Jewel keeps leaping back and forth over it. She's given to embarrassing and vague platitudes, as in "Hands" ("If I could tell the world just one thing/It would be that we're all OK") or the entirety of "Life Uncommon," perhaps the least rousing protest song ever performed. Only the most faithful fans won't giggle at "Fat Boy," an agonizingly syrupy ode to an overweight boy sung like a number from a campfire-girl theater group. It's fine for Jewel to come to the aid of the underdogs--but she belies her sensitivity by mocking a "fat man" in "Down So Long."

A less urgent but still irksome problem is that Jewel, despite being a published author, is often in dire need of an editor. Her songwriting can be almost shockingly sloppy. The not terribly original phrase "fragile flame" crops up in two different songs, as does the metaphor of the heart as an empty room. And never mind the incessant use of sun-sky-wind-water imagery, which threatens to turn her into the John Denver of the next century.

To the Jewel devout, none of these gripes will matter. With her dulcet voice and lulling refrains, Jewel makes the social and political ills of the world go down easy. But in doing so, she unintentionally confounds the problem, since her honeyed background-music folk makes issues of life and death appear more benign and less worrisome than they are. Jewel truly has brought topical folk songs into the modern age: She makes complacent rabble-rousers.

Toronto Sun; Jewel's 'Spirit' displays maturity By Jane Stevenson

It's been four years since we've heard anything new come out of the pouty-shaped mouth of this Alaskan singer-songwriter and for good reason.

Jewel's debut, 1994's Pieces Of You, just kept selling and selling and selling -- 10 million copies worldwide and counting -- delaying her much-anticipated followup.

Thankfully, her 13-track sophomore effort, which finally hits stores on Tuesday with famed producer Patrick Leonard (Madonna) behind the console, was more than worth the wait.

Jewel, who supposedly had a list of 15 different producers from which to choose, expands upon her traditional folk-pop sound with a variety of instrumentation --- piano, keyboards, pedal steel guitar, B3 organ, cello, mandolin, 12-string guitar -- and more mature lyricwriting overall.

Even her little-girl voice has matured to the point that this album sounds downright sophisticated compared to the Elly May Clampett-like emoting heard on some of the Pieces Of You tracks.

As the singer herself has pointed out herself about a million times, she was only 16 and 17 years old when she composed the songs for Pieces Of You, so give her a break.

Certainly, a couple of years of fame and fortune has forced Jewel to grow up quicker than most as she has struggled to deal with the transition from her poverty-ridden life of living in a van to becoming a multi-platinum artist with money to burn.

Take, for example, the sentiments on the pretty-sounding opening track, Deep Water, as she recalls: "And you wake up to realize your standard of living somehow got stuck on survive," the more uptempo Down So Long: "The wind blows cold when you reach the top, It feels like someone's face is stuck to the bottom of my shoe, and the trippier Barcelona: "Super paranoid, I'm blending, I'm blurring, I'm bleeding into the scenery."

More often than not though, Jewel ponders matters of the heart on such standout love songs as What's Simple Is True, Kiss The Flame and Jupiter.

It's when she gets bogged down on weightier subjects that Jewel doesn't quite succeed, like on the first single, Hands: "If I could tell the world just one thing, it would be that we're all OK," or Innocence Maintained: "We've made houses for hatred, It's time we made a place, Where people's souls may be seen and made safe."

Also if you get the strange feeling that you've heard some of these songs before, like the stripped-down, acoustic numbers, Fat Boy and Enter From The East, you have. Jewel has performed both in concert in Toronto over the last couple of years.

An interesting sidebar is the bonus track, This Little Bird, which features Jewel and her mother-manager Nedra Carroll, who possesses a deep, warm voice of her own, singing an a cappella duet.

New York Daily News; By Jim Farber; Jewel's `Spirit' lacks soul as she croons lyrics without substance

UNLIKE most artists, Jewel doesn't mind announcing the message behind her music. ``If I could tell the world just one thing,'' she coos at the start of her new album, ``Spirit'' (Atlantic, in stores this week) ``it would be that we're all OK.''

That's just one of the encouraging things she can't wait to tell the world. In the first few tracks alone, Jewel proclaims that ``the more you live, the more you know,'' ``it's only kindness that matters'' and ``what's simple is true.''

She had better hope so. You certainly won't find anything tricky or challenging on the singer's second album. Not that this should cause her any commercial concern. Jewel sold more than 8 million copies of her debut LP, ``Pieces of You,'' by delivering gooey truths in a fluttery voice over tinkling acoustic chords.

Such pink homilies cast Jewel as the Melanie of her generation, as the chief naif of the '90s. On ``Pieces of You,'' she acted as though she were the first person ever to realize that too much TV can be bad for you, that it's wrong to beat up gay people, that people often hate us for what they dislike in themselves, and that it's better to have a hug than a beer.

For the most popular poet of 1998 (a collection lodged itself on the New York Times bestseller list this summer), timing played a key part in her commercial ascent. She came crooning along just as grunge began to gag on its own self-loathing. Suddenly, pop was ruled by a host of school-girl fantasies come to life, from the Spice Girls' teenybop dreams to Lilith Fair's Girl Scout notion of female power.

By those standards, it's no wonder Jewel arose as this generation's poet laureate. Her precious music completed the picture. Most of the songs featured minimal instrumentation, though her record company later had her rerecord key tracks to beef them up for radio play.

Jewel hasn't made her songs much more elaborate for the new work. Though it's produced by Madonna's frequent collaborator Patrick Leonard, he buffed the pop sheen only slightly. He did encourage a few catchier tunes, such as the gospel-inflected ``Life Uncommon'' and the pretty ``Hands.'' But there's no great expansion in the arrangements.

The spindly instrumentation leaves plenty of room for Jewel's voice, which remains as flexible as a gymnast's body. She can leap octaves like a young Joni Mitchell, though she lacks her character, innovation, mystery or sadness. Jewel's voice has the soulless beauty of a department store mannequin.

Lyrically, she also stays close to the surface. Not only does she suffer from a ceaseless need to dispense fortune-cookie wisdom, but she also seems immune to humor or irony. And she can display a tin ear for language. In one song, she compares her heart to ``grape gum on the ground.'' In another, she puzzlingly sings, ``I am needing you here/inside the absence of fear.''

If Jewel can't be defended as a poet, she still may have value as a kind of motivational speaker for the truly young. She even toyed with the notion of making this album an ``inspirational'' work for the holidays. In a sense, that's what she ended up with -- a musical version of a store-bought holiday greeting card.

UNCUT Rating: 5 stars 'A classic'

Follow-up to eight million-selling Pieces Of You from Alaskan singer-songwriter

Jewel Kilcher's story sounds like the imaginative fiction of some over-excited pop publicist - born on a homestead in Alaska without running water and electricity, lived in a camper van in Southern California, played the coffee houses, signed a record deal, sold eight million copies of her debut album in America, lived happily ever after. The plot could not be more improbable.

Remarkably, it is all more or less true, and the story gets even better Spirit, her second album, should firmly establish Jewel, now 24, as the most sparkling of all female singer-songwriters since Joni Mitchell forged the template some 30 years ago. It is a huge advance on Pieces Of You, her 1994 debut, written while still in her teens. That effort was beguiling, sensitive and full of naive promise - but nothing more. Spirit, made in just five weeks and with the songs apparently selected from more than 200 in her prolific portfolio, marks her full flowering as a writer of lyrical subtlety and melodic invention with an astonishingly mature head on her young shoulders, generously dispensing lessons in life and insights into the human condition.

She has the whiff of longevity, too, a built-to-last quality that suggests her talent will still be shining brightly long after the likes of Alanis Morissette and Fiona Apple have faded. Just as the enduring Mitchell has made one of the albums of 1998 with Taming The Tiger, you somehow know Jewel will still be making quality albums in the year 2020.

Should that concern us when we are talking about three-minute disposable pop songs? The answer is surely yes. In her time Melanie rivalled Mitchell for popularity, but she never shared her gift for changing our perceptions of the world. That power belongs only to those rare poets who can transcend the ephemeral - Dylan, Cohen, Nyro, Newman. Prepare to admit Jewel into that elite company.

This is also one of those albums on which your favourite song changes with every listen. "Deep Water" is an achingly beautiful acoustic strum with a classic Jewel treatise about realising our full potential. "What's Simple Is True" has a floating kd lang quality, while "Hands" is perhaps the key track, a piano ballad with shades of Natalie Merchant and a message about confronting one's inner fear. "Innocence Maintained" has a bouncy pop hook but a darker theme of sin and redemption, while "Barcelona" has a soaring "Let me fly" chorus which crashes back to earth dramatically on a minor chord. "Life Uncommon" is a hymn to setting ourselves free, "Do You" sounds like one of Sheryl Crow's more intriguing song-stories, and the album finishes on a perfect 10 with the prayer-like "Absence Of Fear".

I have spent weeks attempting to work out why this album is so special. I still don't really know. Yet somehow Jewel seems to possess an extraordinary serenity and understanding of our place in the greater scheme of things, a philosophical acceptance that we inhabit a tiny crack of consciousness in an infinite universe of unknowing with only a flickering moment out of countless eternity to make our presence count. And we had better not waste it, she seems to say.

Perhaps it was all those long nights in the cabin with no electricity and only the stars for company which produced this visionary form of Alaskan Zen.

No guru, no method, no teacher - but, despite her tender years, Jewel seems to have crammed the wisdom of a lifetime into these exquisitely inspiring songs.

Nigel Williamson

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