Jewel – Pieces Of You
This girl’s just now hitting it big, and this album has been out for two years!? Amazing. Her presence on Atlantic seems to make it likely that the label sought her out as a kind of folksy Tori Amos clone, but Jewel is much more than that. I will admit that the single “Who Will Save Your Soul” mesmerized me into buying this album, and I’m glad it did. There are several live tracks that really come across as average, but the last song, “Amen”, is really where Jewel comes into her own and proves that she could indeed be the next Tori Amos without being a Tori clone. She abandons the folky style that has come to be her trademark and does 
some truly beautiful singing, particularly as the tune draws to a close. Even if you don’t particularly care for her singles or her album so far, I think this is one to watch in the future. Highly recommended, even if only for the last track on the album!
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- Who Will Save Your Soul (4:00)
- Pieces of You (4:15)
- Little Sister (2:29)
- Foolish Games (5:39)
- Near You Always (3:08)
- Painters (6:43)
- Morning Song (3:35)
- Adrian (7:02)
- I’m Sensitive (2:54)
- You Were Meant For Me (4:13)
- Don’t (3:34)
- Daddy (3:49)
- Angel Standing By (2:38)
- Amen (4:32)
Released by: Atlantic
Release date: 1994
Total running time: 58:56
Another project by Jellyfish alumni Roger Manning and Tim Smith, this album sounds more like the first Jellyfish album than 1992’s Spilt Milk did, opting for Bellybutton’s slightly trippy sound rather than the Queen-like melodic hard rock of Spilt Milk. Things kick off with a wonderfully (and strangely) harmonized number, “Daphne’s Disease”. Other highlights include the somber ballad “Mother”, the 60’s-pop-inspired “Onion Umbrella” (well, the tray card says “union,” but the lyrics say “onion”), the excellent “Fly”, a commentary on a certain U.S. president who didn’t inhale titled “American 
Pipe,” and quite a few others. Though I’m not sure that these former Jellyfish members share Jason Falkner’s ability to come up with a catchy song to go between all the catchy musical hooks, they do manage to sing out-of-this-world harmonies, making Demolotion quite a treat for those who thrive on vocal harmony.
A bizarre retro-explosion of surf rock stylings, I’ll cop to the fact that this CD’s presence in my collection is primarily due to the Love Theme From Mystery Science Theater 3000. Some of this album’s tunes are really, really strange, dovetailing with the 50s B-movie poster album cover by including some incredibly obscure B-movie soundbytes, some of which I suspect are the band’s own invention rather than actual movie clips. (In that context, the MST theme is utterly appropriate.)
I hadn’t heard anything out of Brent since his awful second solo project, A Matter of Feel, when I found this album quite by accident in 1995. It arrived at a radio station being run in the same building where I worked, and though it qualifies as contemporary Christian, it wasn’t suitable for the station’s country-gospel format so they were glad to part with it. I found it an interesting switch from Brent’s previous material, but in retrospect, with his first two solo albums’ abundance of songs about alcohol abuse and so on, it’s not much of a surprise. There are three songs I have to single out as favorites: “One Love”, with its very well-arranged harmonies and some really catchy lyrics and music, the James-Taylor-ish “All Is Well”, and my favorite, “Let His Love Into Your Heart”, an acoustic guitar and piano piece that was composed by Bourgeois and guitarist Lyle Workman – the same two guys responsible for “I Don’t Mind At All” from the Yoyo album by 
She’s back again, perhaps a little more contemporary than she was with Little Earthquakes, and more than likely as a result of her surprising success things have moved into a more modern direction. The verdict? Too bad. Her debut album was so powerful simply because it was drastically different from current product. The changes, while not quite a wholesale defection to commercial expediency, really wind up being unnecessary. But there are enough songs which seem to be on the right track in spite of themselves – “Pretty Good Year”, the seemingly Ren & Stimpy-inspired “Space Dog”, and the curious