Published on Oct 31, 1999
Paula Cole’s last album,
This Fire, was a brilliant piece of music, though a bit
painful to listen to sometimes; Cole’s high-school-art-student
mixture of naivete and idealism grated occasionally, but mostly it
shone like passion and truth, rare in this day and age of
manufactured music. So when
Amen was announced, my household pre-ordered it, to see what
the earnest Cole had come up with.
I have to admit, it’s an interesting but ultimately unsatisfying
bag. While
This Fire was a Lilith Fair fan’s best hope, the usual
collection of pop and acoustic folk,
Amen is almost a rhythm and blues album — the album’s
opener, “I Believe In Love”, could have been lifted straight from
the Philadelphia Sound of the late seventies. When the album isn’t
rhythm and blues, it’s experimental, daring, and different. Cole’s
not resting on the laurels of “I Don’t Wanna Wait”, and she should
get credit for her courage.
She should also get credit for her light touch on the CD’s
production — her sound is crystalline, lacking the muddiness that
plagues female vocalists, and her mix of instruments is perfect.
Whatever its other merits or lack thereof,
Amen sounds good musically — something to be thankful for,
so the experimentation of the music can rise or fall on its own
merits. The problem is that those merits are too few and too far
between.
It’s very hard to argue the power and sincerity in Cole’s music,
but you can argue whether it’s any good — and the answer on
Amen is, to be blunt, only sometimes. “Rhythm Of Life” is a
jazz/hip-hop testimony to Cole’s religious faith, heartfelt and
complex, but it could have done with a bit less rapping and a bit
more singing. (It’s not that Cole
can’t rap, though she ain’t Queen Latifah, but she sings
better). “Pearl” is a well-written reflection on being a female
musician, but lacks punch in the long run. “La Tonya”‘s tale of
ghetto life in the end leaves you a bit short and unsatisfied,
never making you
feel the pain that’s behind it. Then there are the songs
that work without any mistakes: “I Believe In Love,””Free,””Amen”
and and the funky “God Is Watching.” Finally, my momma said if you
can’t say something nice, don’t say it, so I’m not mentioning
“Suwanee Jo.”
Amen is well named. It is a testimony to Cole’s growing
religious faith, a strong and emphatic statement about what’s
important to Paula Cole as an artist and a person, and at its core
an exposition on belief. It has some problems as a work of music,
though, and because of that, caveat emptor must be invoked; in some
ways artists as disparate as Stevie Wonder and Amy Grant have been
over this territory already, and mapped it in a more accessible
fashion. Let’s hope next time the Paula Cole Band remembers
that.