In songs from Picking Up The Pieces like “Carnivore,” “Everything Breaks,” “Mercy” and “Nicotine Love” you can hear with crystal clear audio and the vocals so close up in the mix how strong Jewel’s voice really is, and what a gift it is to get it in such form twenty years into her career. In her new book Never Broken, she writes about seeing shapes when creating a melody and understanding the technicalities of her voice, like falsetto, melisma, vibrato and yodeling, and how to control those to express emotion. Picking Up The Pieces sounds like the first time she entered the studio and wasn’t afraid to step into the magnitude of her own voice. On Pieces of You, there’s a clear discomfort in the studio tracks (she’s joked about it being her “Kermit the Frog” voice), and Spirit and This Way can veer a bit towards a radio-friendly voice that wasn’t as audible in her live shows. Picking Up The Pieces is the first album that really showcases the strength, vitality and power of Jewel’s voice throughout, unvarnished and without interruption. “Everything Breaks” is a standout – it’s a little less stripped down than in previous incarnations, but Jewel’s voice shines throughout. The former receives a more radio-friendly production, and the addition of a stronger band presence during the chorus adds weight to the song, but doesn’t lose the innocence and story-telling lilt of the piece. “A Boy Needs a Bike” and “Everything Breaks” follow – both songs that have been in Jewel’s catalogue since the mid-90s. It’s a daring move to put this song first on the album – on one hand, it makes sense considering the recent upheaval in her personal life, but it’s also pretty different than what you hear on Pieces of You, which actually strengthens the album by building a foundation for itself that is firmly its own, and not merely a reflection of her debut. It signals that despite divorce and being in the business for over twenty years, this could be a period of intensely potent artistic expression. It catalogues the end of a relationship and the inevitable emotional fallout, but with a maturity and thoughtfulness that eschews bitterness and instead embraces growth and understanding. It infuses her poetic sensibilities with a finger-picked guitar part, slowly building to a cathartic release at the end of the song. The album opens with “Love Used To Be,” one of the strongest songs she’s written since 2001’s This Way. It doesn’t compromise, but instead it takes some of her strongest songs from early in her career, emboldens her vocals, adds in some fantastic new songs and finds a production style that offers a raw, delightful look into what makes Jewel such a compelling singer/songwriter. It isn’t her proverbially throwing up her hands and writing what the masses want to hear. What’s so brilliant about Picking Up The Pieces, Jewel’s new album and first on Sugar Hill Records, is that it isn’t a nostalgia act. Add in a fairly grueling touring schedule, including opening for Bob Dylan, Neil Young, headlining Lilith Fair with other major 90’s acts and you can see why people would crave a return to the Pieces of You aesthetic, but perhaps also why they’d forgotten what exactly that sounded like. Her folk music played between Nirvana, Pearl Jam and Soundgarden, but found a following that grew way beyond niche. This is natural, especially when radio constantly played those first three songs and their accompanying music videos were always on MTV and VH1. But since then, Pieces has essentially been distilled to its major hit singles: “Who Will Save Your Soul,” “You Were Meant For Me,” “Foolish Games” and to some extent “Morning Song.” But when it did, people connected to Jewel’s open-hearted and unrelenting gaze into the psyche, and were willing to go with her through the album’s dark twists and turns. Except for diehard fans, though, people forget that Pieces of You was sprawling, slightly meandering, utterly honest, difficult, vulnerable, and razor sharp in its grappling with human flaws and emotions – it was not a neatly packaged album like many other famous, major-label debuts, which perhaps is why it took two years to break. Many, including Jewel herself, have dubbed her latest album Picking Up The Pieces as a logical companion, or book-end, to her smash debut Pieces of You (1995).
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