Sunday, April 27, 2008
A+E, Music, Reviews

Sheryl Crow

“Detours”  (A&M)

CREDIT: Norma Jean Roy

SHERYL CROW
w/Matt White
Saturday, May 3
Chastain Park Amphitheatre
$62.50-82.50                                                                                                                 
404-249-6400
www.livenation.com

It’s been a tough few years for Sheryl Crow. Since 2005’s “Wildflowers,” she’s weathered more than her share of detours on life’s winding road, including a heavily publicized split with Lance Armstrong and a successful battle with breast cancer. Not surprisingly, those experiences have made her a sharper, more poignant lyricist, which makes “Detours” a comeback of sorts.
  
Producer/multi-instrumentalist/songwriter Bill Bottrell, who was largely responsible for the success of Crow’s 1993 debut “Tuesday Night Music Club” but has been out of the picture since, returns to lend a hand, and the results are impressive. Crow gets angry about the price of “Gasoline,” and the government’s mishandling of a post-Katrina New Orleans in the incisive lyrics overlaying the cheery rhythms of “Love is Free.” It’s that dichotomy between dark words and light(er) music that gives these tunes their edge; the sing-songy, nearly childlike chorus of “Out of Our Heads” manages to make the line “losing babies to genocide” seem downright upbeat.
  
 Crow’s knack for sumptuous folk-pop melodies on the title track and the lovelorn, soulful “Now that You’re Gone” is intact, but she isn’t afraid to add occasional offbeat Arabic instrumentation, or to strip the sound down to just her own softly strummed acoustic guitar. She generally keeps things simple, yet not stark, on an album that, at 14 songs, takes listeners through the darkness of cancer on the searing “Make it Go Away” and out the other side to the rather clichéd “love is all you need” message of the otherwise gorgeous, even moving “Love is All There Is.” 3.5 STARS—Hal Horowitz