A WHOLE NEW YOU
Shawn Colvin
(Columbia/ Sony)
RATING: three
Shawn Colvin was, for me, one of those great surprise discoveries, a heretofore-unheard-of artist whose 1996 CD A Few Small Repairs was given to me and ignored for a whole month before I finally got around to listening to it. When I did, I couldn’t believe my ears: just when the world was reaching saturation point with all these “female singer-songwriters,” here comes another one who had the absolute gall to junk all the Natalie Imbruglia pretensions and just go with good old-fashioned songwriting. And she was great at it.
A Few Small Repairs eventually won Colvin three Grammy nominations that year, and I became a full-blown fan, digging into her back catalogue to find the other sweetly sad gems that Colvin had churned out in previous years without my knowing.
According to Sigmund Freud, people only really need two things to be happy: work and love. Presumably, Shawn Colvin didn’t have much of either when she churned out A Few Small Repairs (or, for that matter, any of her previous albums), in which her songs about loneliness and career disillusionment resonated most. Now, four years, a happy marriage, and a baby later, Colvin is back with A Whole New You
.
The title is plenty apt, as the album quickly reveals the changes of existential magnitude that Colvin’s gone through. Once the master of dark, poetic songs that sounded like letters from the brink of suicide, Colvin no longer traffics in melancholy. Instead, A Whole New You is filled with songs of love fulfilled and returned.
Take for example the title track, a song of self-affirmation in which Colvin advises, “You have the right to shake the loneliness and shine the light/ Take all your tears and save ‘em for a rainy night/ Shake your head in wonder when it’s all too good to be true/ Like a whole new you.” It’s a far cry from her old songs, where she sang lines like, “I lost the thread/ I lost the map/ it’s not a feeling/ it’s a fact.”
Colvin’s old rhythms are intact, her bluegrass-influenced folk melodies still quietly impressive, her lyrics still lush and evocative. It’s easy to recognize Colvin’s mark on the album’s 11 songs, though most of them are written from a happy place the polar opposite from her old songs.
And Colvin knows it, too, and it amazes her as well. “All of my old world and all the things in it are hard to find/ Everything changed in a matter of minutes/ and nothing was saved in time,” she sings in “A Matter of Minutes”; on “Bound to You,” she enthuses, “I feel alive like I never have”; and on “One Small Year,” she acknowledges the cathartic passage of time, “One small year/ it’s been an eternity/ It’s taken all of me to get here/ to get through this one small year.”
Most of the other songs are straightforward love songs, delighting in the long-term love that she’s found. On “Nothing Like You,” Colvin wraps her mouth around some pretty awkward rhymes (“I have seen the top of Mt. Ventoux/ I have seen a miracle or two/ But they’re nothing like you”) but somehow makes it work with a light touch. “Anywhere You Go” celebrates the long haul, while acknowledging that relationships are often complicated and confusing. Still, the melody is uplifting, and the song is largely an affirmation of marriage.
But for truly standout tracks, one has to look at the exceptions. All the tracks are written by Colvin and old songwriting cohort John Leventhal, except for “Roger Wilco,” co-written by the much-missed Edie Brickell, who brings her talent for narrative lyrics to good use for this anti-war song. And then there’s “Another Plane Went Down,” a richly detailed dream sequence whose sheer weirdness and disconcerting imagery hypnotizes the listener. The CD ends with a melancholy acoustic track “I’m Sorry Now,” a surprising conclusion to the album’s theme of fulfillment, but its stark emotion catches the heart.
By and large, however, even the best in A Whole New You plays like the throwaway tracks from A Few Small Repairs. What does it say the standout tracks are also the darkest? We’re happy she’s happy, and in fact A Whole New You could still rank among Colvin’s career best. But, perhaps it’s because contentment and happiness is still new themes for her to explore, A Whole New You isn’t able to reach as deep into listeners’ hearts, feeling just a little bit superficial. Not that we’re wishing for a return to depression, but fans will have to wait for Colvin to settle into the groove of being a whole new her before they can expect that same old connection.—Kristine Fonacier
(Columbia/ Sony)
RATING: three
Shawn Colvin was, for me, one of those great surprise discoveries, a heretofore-unheard-of artist whose 1996 CD A Few Small Repairs was given to me and ignored for a whole month before I finally got around to listening to it. When I did, I couldn’t believe my ears: just when the world was reaching saturation point with all these “female singer-songwriters,” here comes another one who had the absolute gall to junk all the Natalie Imbruglia pretensions and just go with good old-fashioned songwriting. And she was great at it.
A Few Small Repairs eventually won Colvin three Grammy nominations that year, and I became a full-blown fan, digging into her back catalogue to find the other sweetly sad gems that Colvin had churned out in previous years without my knowing.
According to Sigmund Freud, people only really need two things to be happy: work and love. Presumably, Shawn Colvin didn’t have much of either when she churned out A Few Small Repairs (or, for that matter, any of her previous albums), in which her songs about loneliness and career disillusionment resonated most. Now, four years, a happy marriage, and a baby later, Colvin is back with A Whole New You
.
The title is plenty apt, as the album quickly reveals the changes of existential magnitude that Colvin’s gone through. Once the master of dark, poetic songs that sounded like letters from the brink of suicide, Colvin no longer traffics in melancholy. Instead, A Whole New You is filled with songs of love fulfilled and returned.
Take for example the title track, a song of self-affirmation in which Colvin advises, “You have the right to shake the loneliness and shine the light/ Take all your tears and save ‘em for a rainy night/ Shake your head in wonder when it’s all too good to be true/ Like a whole new you.” It’s a far cry from her old songs, where she sang lines like, “I lost the thread/ I lost the map/ it’s not a feeling/ it’s a fact.”
Colvin’s old rhythms are intact, her bluegrass-influenced folk melodies still quietly impressive, her lyrics still lush and evocative. It’s easy to recognize Colvin’s mark on the album’s 11 songs, though most of them are written from a happy place the polar opposite from her old songs.
And Colvin knows it, too, and it amazes her as well. “All of my old world and all the things in it are hard to find/ Everything changed in a matter of minutes/ and nothing was saved in time,” she sings in “A Matter of Minutes”; on “Bound to You,” she enthuses, “I feel alive like I never have”; and on “One Small Year,” she acknowledges the cathartic passage of time, “One small year/ it’s been an eternity/ It’s taken all of me to get here/ to get through this one small year.”
Most of the other songs are straightforward love songs, delighting in the long-term love that she’s found. On “Nothing Like You,” Colvin wraps her mouth around some pretty awkward rhymes (“I have seen the top of Mt. Ventoux/ I have seen a miracle or two/ But they’re nothing like you”) but somehow makes it work with a light touch. “Anywhere You Go” celebrates the long haul, while acknowledging that relationships are often complicated and confusing. Still, the melody is uplifting, and the song is largely an affirmation of marriage.
But for truly standout tracks, one has to look at the exceptions. All the tracks are written by Colvin and old songwriting cohort John Leventhal, except for “Roger Wilco,” co-written by the much-missed Edie Brickell, who brings her talent for narrative lyrics to good use for this anti-war song. And then there’s “Another Plane Went Down,” a richly detailed dream sequence whose sheer weirdness and disconcerting imagery hypnotizes the listener. The CD ends with a melancholy acoustic track “I’m Sorry Now,” a surprising conclusion to the album’s theme of fulfillment, but its stark emotion catches the heart.
By and large, however, even the best in A Whole New You plays like the throwaway tracks from A Few Small Repairs. What does it say the standout tracks are also the darkest? We’re happy she’s happy, and in fact A Whole New You could still rank among Colvin’s career best. But, perhaps it’s because contentment and happiness is still new themes for her to explore, A Whole New You isn’t able to reach as deep into listeners’ hearts, feeling just a little bit superficial. Not that we’re wishing for a return to depression, but fans will have to wait for Colvin to settle into the groove of being a whole new her before they can expect that same old connection.—Kristine Fonacier
posted by Kristine F. | Wednesday, August 01, 2001
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