Perfectly Clear Review

But the album is overcrowded by placid soft-rock tunes like "Two Become One" and "Anyone But You" with schmaltzy choruses and flavorless piano-laden verses. Jewel contributes bland pickup-truck philosophy about relationships in cutesy little-girl vocals that rarely show off her voice's texture (though, yes, there's some yodeling).
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It isn't hard to view Jewel's country music makeover on Perfectly Clear with a mildly cynical eye, especially as it follows her dance-pop shakeup on 2003's 0304 by a mere five years. Such whiplash changes in direction are bound to raise suspicion, but Jewel wears her country threads better than her diva hand-me-downs, possibly because it suits her mythical back-story of living out of the back of the truck but it's also a smaller leap from folk to country...at least in theory, that is, as Perfectly Clear isn't quite a full-fledged country album.
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Pop-folkie Jewel's finally gone country on her seventh album, Perfectly Clear, and it suits her: She's an earnest storyteller, and in the land of steel guitars (and co-producer John Rich), there's no shame in tracks titled ''Love Is a Garden'' and ''Thump, Thump,'' two sweet, sway-along tunes. B+
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