Grade: A+
Summer's early.
Sunshine, 80-degree weather, overcast mornings and thunderstorms. It's all inside Sheryl Crow's fourth studio album, "C'mon C'mon."
Why summer? Why not? The radio has been beating out her first single, "Soak Up the Sun," which gives her listeners the perfect summer message - if not the perfect message for life all together, "I'm gonna tell everyone to lighten up."
Philosophy lesson? Perhaps, but the album doesn't shine as bright as it's orange album cover throughout - she does however. She'll definitely woo her listeners with sad love songs and life's complaints. But, don't worry, there's a lot of rock to the album as well.
Sheryl Crow's image has stuck to the sultry sound of retro-70s rock and roll and with that comes her sex appeal. (That sexy mouth and voice have never failed either.) This time, like "Globe Sessions," she shows even more skin, whether it's in her lyrics or in the pictures inside the jacket.
The album tells you to c'mon in with the beating, hip hit, "Steve McQueen." It's catchy, it's alive, it has soul and it's only the beginning.
Throughout the album she has guest appearances from fellow rockers such as Lenny Kravitz, Liz Phair, Don Henley and, huh ... Gweneth Paltrow? Yes, the Academy Award winning actress stops acting to sing background vocals in the song, "It's Only Love."
Welcome to Sheryl Crow's summer. Love hurts here, and the world changes - especially in "Safe and Sound," a song that according to Crow's recent interviews, regained a new resonance after the September 11 tragedy.
So, Crow takes off a few layers and shows her skin. Because of that the album glows like a good tan. But there's a sunburn every so often. Even those sad songs have an unyielding hope. Maybe that's just the optimism from "Soak Up the Sun," shining through; maybe it's Sheryl's ability to craft music into an emotional, and sometimes personal, slide show people can relate too.
Unlike her other albums, this one is a little more souped up with more backgrounds, mixing, twang, rhinestones and flip-flops. Sheryl didn't change her sound, just upgraded like many other time-enduring musicians.
The simplest song for Sheryl Crow fans that like the "untouched" type of songs, is the title song "C'mon C'mon" that taints and soothes with a country-styled bop, and keeps the sound genuine with basic instruments and vocals.
But nobody is perfect, and Crow tries to communicate that in her lyrics about her bouts of love and recent bouts of depression, apparent in the last song "Weather Channel." She expresses the emotions compared to the channel Midwesterners have learned to watch while sitting in the cellars of their lives and "waiting for the storm."
Crow said in interviews that she wanted a summer album. She hits each aspect - from the over-heated days while driving with the windows down to the mornings that have an itch of anxiety and are too cold for it to be June.
Since it is a summer album, this is the type of CD that will have memories attached to the songs - probably all of them.
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