Jewel

Pieces Of You

Reviewed by: John Aizlewood

Review date: June 1996

Star rating: ****

Twenty-year-old Alaskan Jewel (hippy parents alert) Kilcher has plenty going for her. She's uncommonly attractive, has spotted the gap in the market for a less squawky Tori Amos and has sufficient songwriterly cachet to entice Ben Keith, who produced Harvest, Harvest Moon and Patsy Cline, to do the same on this debut (recorded in 1994 but only now stumbling up the Billboard Top 10). She's obviously an unreconstructed hippy - allegedly lives in a van in San Diego; allegedly carries some Alaskan soil with her in a Tupperware container; certainly pads out her lyric booklet with poems, including the grim Upon Moving Into My Van - but nobody's that perfect. Lyrically, especially on the genuinely moving Angel Standing By and the plainly bonkers - if literary - Morning Song (You can be Henry Miller and I'll be Anais Nin) she's often brilliant and she has supremely wrought vocals. More bright melodies like Who Will Save Your Soul, two less songs and she'd be a world beater, but this is excellent for starters.

Jewel : Pieces Of UK

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