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- Summary: After an album of lullabies, Jewel returns with her latest country release, which features "Stay Here Forever," a song from the movie Valentine's Day.
- Record Label: Valory
- Genre(s): Country
- More Details and Credits »
Score distribution:
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Positive: 3 out of 6
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Mixed: 2 out of 6
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Negative: 1 out of 6
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She’s saved here--on both the produced main album and its bare-bones acoustic cousin on the deluxe version, which isn’t as different as it might initially appear--by her essential sweetness, which shines through in her melody and mellow moods that aren’t sullied by a hint of wildness.
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The set is more sweet than it is wild, but it finds an effective middle ground between the multiplatinum troubadour and the modern country songstress.
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The pedal steel and fiddle sound like add-ons designed to get her played on country radio, and a few of the melodies could've been hijacked from a Nashville jingles factory. But there's some moving midlife melancholy beneath the surface, especially on the startling ''Fading.''
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Jewel offers basic country tropes both musical (twanging Telecasters, whining fiddles, banjoes bubbling underneath the surface, train-track rhythms) and lyrical (with references to both Wal-Mart and a dying soldier imparting wisdom) in the hopes of rousing the market base she first courted on 2008’s “Perfectly Clear.’’
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"Perfectly Clear" suggested that she has the potential to make a great country album, but the uneven Sweet and Wild certainly isn't it.
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These 11 tunes aim for a kind of down-home romance but lack the lyrical specificity that builds believability.
Score distribution:
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Positive: 0 out of 1
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Mixed: 1 out of 1
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Negative: 0 out of 1
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Sep 7, 2010
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