Shawn Colvin
As usual, Shawn Colvin puts her best new song first. Following a lag caused equally by Colvin’s new motherhood and commercial expectations following her Grammy wins for 1996’s A Few Small Repairs, Whole New You plays things very safe. So “Matter of Minutes” shares with “Sunny Came Home” and “Polaroids” (the openers from Repairs and 1992’s Fat City, respectively) a deceptive calm that masks a serious flight impulse and an immediately memorable hook. A string section co-arranged by Colvin’s collaborator, John Leventhal, is appropriately dramatic for Colvin’s status upgrade but doesn’t weigh the song down.
After that, it’s a mixed bag with little whole or new about it. The title song has a terrific chorus that sounds ready-made for the radio without being disingenuous. Several songs are dominated by Leventhal’s craftsmanship; he plays most of the instruments throughout, leaving Colvin without a guitar. But for all the songs’ appeal, most sound like leftovers from Repairs with drum programs, strings and keyboards discreetly tacked on. The limp middle third of the disc suffers most from this malady. “Another Plane Went Down” wastes a slyly evocative “Did she say that?” lyric (You and the Italian woman naked/your fingers between her legs) on a slow shuffle that waits too long to get to a ghostly chorus. “Bound to You” and “Roger Wilco” are tuneless and polite.
For better or worse — and with most artists, it’s worse — Colvin now has a familiar sound. Not just because it’s a Shawn Colvin disc does each song, taken separately, sound just like a Shawn Colvin song, as heard on Fat City and especially Repairs.
By the time the more melodic “One Small Year” and “I’ll Say I’m Sorry Now” close the album, Whole New You has been overloaded with slow ballast. Those last numbers recover the emotional, if not musical, momentum. Colvin, often mislabeled as a folk singer, is really a pop singer who is one of the best conveyors of disappointment working today. The final moments of Whole New You finally transcend the torpor, but too much of the disc mistakes that gift for singing about disappointment with disappointing the listener.
