Shawn Colvin

Ever since Joni Mitchell spread her free-verse wings, many a female singer-songwriter has
tried to master the introspective idiom only to sink into the swamp of banality or shoot off
into some chilly, abstract emotional ozone. But Shawn Colvin stays aloft above her own
inner geography by combining a gift for describing fragile, passionate and anxious states of
mind with a dense, low, percussive sound that is both rhythmic and muscular. St... More >

This ambitious sophomore wins the prize--the female postfolkie you're too bored to hate. The digitalized Suzanne Vega is wisely popwise and the bionic Joan Baez positively swangin' by comparison. Matching strong, undistinguished voice to literate, undistinguished verse, Colvin is like a young Joni Mitchell without swoops or self-invention. And lest you riposte that young Joni Mitchell beats old Joni Mitchell, Columbia doles out production chores to old Joni Mitchell's bass-playing husband, who drags the ordinary down toward an offensively well-groomed studio folk-rock that combines the smugness of '70s El Lay with the overstatement of '80s Megapop--and later for the '90s. (Grade: C)