The online version (with a new pic) is here http://www.usatoday.com/life/music/reviews/2003-06-02-jewel_x.htm For the web-challenged, the article is below (complete with the old and tired "faceted Jewel" line we've seen for what, 8 years now?) Mike ________________________________________ Many-faceted Jewel even more polished in '0304' By Elysa Gardner, USA TODAY Has any popular artist shown more growth over the past five years than Jewel? Her last album, 2001's This Way, established the blond minstrel, one of several sensitive young women who became poster girls during the Lilith Fair era, as a more mature singer/songwriter and a performer of considerable force and grace With her new outing, 0304, Jewel raises the bar again, exploring more adventurous rhythms and textures while sustaining and nurturing her folk-pop sensibility. The delightful R&B and dance-music flourishes on Stand, Run 2 U and the single Intuition -- all co-composed by Cuban-American tunesmith Lester A. Mendez, who also co-produced the album with Jewel -- dispel any doubts that this neo-hippie can get her groove on. Other tracks incorporate jazz, rock and even new-wave nuances with an easy, playful elegance that never feels forced. Jewel's lyrics, too, seem wittier and wiser, less starry-eyed, though her fundamental social and romantic idealism remain resolute. "I am tired of waiting/So this time I'm leaping," she sings on the gently sinuous Becoming. "I reach -- beyond myself." If more mainstream artists were encouraged to take that approach, the music industry might not be in such dire straits.
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