Jewel, Bloomsbury Theatre, Review by Max Bell

A flash of inspiration

The six-million-album woman came to London and all she got was a lousy gig in a London university student theatre on a misty Sunday night.

Maybe that's one of the reasons why Jewel Kilcher's growing coterie of British fans like her so much. Here is a new star, born in the Alaskan tundra, who plays dates with Neil young and Bob Dylan, makes records with various Red Hot Chili Peppers (and then ditches them) and is about to screen test for a movie co-starring Leonardo DiCaprio.

Yet she'll happily get on stage armed with a couple of guitars and a raft of stories that are neither too self-deprecating to be cloying, nor so right-on that you are left thinking she's just another folk-hippy troubadour.

Jewel is such a striking individual that her natural Swiss-beauty ought to be the first thing you notice about her. But Kilcher's God-given charms fade into the background once her knee-knocking stance and a vocal repertoire to match her sundry facial disguises, slide into place. It is tempting to locate her style in a tradition encompassing familiar names, such as Joni Mitchell or Tori Amos, but loosen up those straitjackets and she resembles another master of musical disguise and tragi-comic intent - Loudon Wainwright.

The bittersweet route Jewel follows has been taken so often that even those who only travel the American road by proxy start to recognise the signposts; luckily she makes enough detours during the sexually explicit Race Car Driver or the almost end-of-the-affair You Were Meant For Me to keep the journey vivid. Given that her voice, face and physical presence all pass the check factor, Jewel's main asset lies in surpassing the norm.