Crow's 'Globe' is worth spinning

Courtesy of A&M Megababe Sheryl Crow makes her 'Favorite Mistake.'

Courtesy of A&M Megababe Sheryl Crow makes her 'Favorite Mistake.'

In 1996, Sheryl Crow released a follow-up to her star-making and Grammy-winning "Tuesday Night Music Club" and called it "Sheryl Crow."

That title would definitely be more apt for her third release, "The Globe Sessions," the first album in which Crow largely scraps her cleverly worded third-person storytelling approach to rock songs and focuses on her clever old self.

Gone are the "He''s and "She"s, the troubled drag queen, the lonely housewife, the sweaty Vegas stripper-dealer and the vending machine repair man. On "The Globe Sessions," named for the New York studio where the album was recorded, the "I"'s have it.

The result of "Globe"-trotting through Crow's mind is a compelling portrait of the artist as a 36-year-old woman that mostly rocks but sometimes rolls over on itself.

Aside from establishing who Crow really is, "Globe" also reinforces the sound that has become Crow's hallmark - the seductive, slightly throaty voice of a small town girl who's been around the big city too many times, set against bluesy guitar, swelling organ, boot-tapping beats and a swooning Western-flavored slide.

That urban-country-pop-rock-blues sound is present on most of the album but is best heard on the album's opener and first hit single, "My Favorite Mistake."

Beginning with a healthy dose of wah-wah guitar, the bittersweet tune of a love gone creeping instantly tattoos itself on your mind, for both its ingratiating chorus and Crow's weary wit about leaving a sex-based love-hate relationship.

But Sheryl Crow is not merely a woman scorned.

She's an overwhelmed entertainer on the radio-friendly "Anything But Down" and a poet on the lush "Riverwide."

She's a party girl surveying her decaying surroundings on "There Goes the Neighborhood," a musically fascinating song cursed with some of the most inane lyrics ever spoken by any artist of Crow's caliber.

She's a woman asserting her independence on "It Don't Hurt," a rollicking little country song that could put her in the running as an honorary Heartbreaker, as in '70s era Tom Petty.

She even channels Bob Dylan on "Mississippi," appropriate since the song was a gift from Dylan that went unused on his "Time Out of Mind" sessions.

Crow lets loose here, with her swaggering delivery of the brilliant, fast-paced lyrics matched by Benmont Tench's driving piano and Lisa Germano's lilting violin, making "Mississippi" one of the best states in which Crow's ever been.

She scores again on the sprawling "Am I Getting Through (Part I & II), with Part I being a slow confessional growl and part II its high-octane, stream-of-consciousness counterpart.

Crow also flies on the irresistible ode to those who can't dance (literally and otherwise), "Members Only," a folk jam that takes its name from a kitschy '80s jacket and cribs part of its underlying beat from Crow's own "Can't Cry Anymore."

It truly is hard to resist a ditty whose chorus begins, "And all the white folks shake their asses, looking for the two and four."

It's similarly difficult to resist the charms of "The Globe Sessions," a world where Crow is giving herself so whole-heartedly to her audience.

If only she hadn't given us the aforementioned turkey "There Goes the Neighborhood" or the awful "Maybe That's Something," maybe there'd have been more room for the fine, funky, fun-lovin' hidden bonus track on which Crow croons "I was thinkin' 'bout my livin', I was feelin' pretty fine."

Now that all Crow's thinkin' and feelin' has made it onto a shining disc, this is one "Globe" worth spinning.

09-29-98