Flat return for queen of 90s country-pop

SHERYL CROW

Evolution ★★★★★

Stream: Alarm Clock, Evolution

Sheryl Crow announced her retirement as a recording artist after the release of her 2019 album Threads, but the singersongwriter’s mojo has risen once more. Evolution is a breezy, slight return by the artist who became a country-pop juggernaut in the 90s with her perky valentine to chilling out, “All I Wanna Do”, and inescapable belter “If It Makes You Happy”.

Will Evolution make her fans happy? The answer is a very qualified “maybe”.

The project, which arrives the year after her induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, does not tinker with the core DNA of Crow’s sunny-side-up songwriting. Her voice retains that sprightly, can-do quality. She still sounds like your friend’s approachable big sister giving you a pep talk before your first day at university. The melodies, meanwhile, have that familiar sugary bite – which occasionally tips into saccharine.

She has plenty to say, too – opener “Alarm Clock” meditates on how dreams give you goosebumps when you wake. The rumination is dialled up on the title track, a critique of artificial intelligence and its ability to mimic the cadences of any singer you can imagine – including Sheryl Crow. “Turned on the radio and there it was,” she sings. “A song that sounded like something I wrote.”

How ironic, then, that Evolution itself has a whiff of artifice. It would be unfair to say Crow is on autopilot. She has spoken about how much these tunes mean to her and has, after all, come out of retirement to record them. But for all her commitment to the material, the pastoral country-rock to which Evolution invariably defaults has a generic sheen.

Thirty years ago, Crow’s twanging coffee-house pop became a refuge for those terrified by grunge and rave. Music has moved on – but Crow is still in the same disposable groove, and Evolution, for all the thoughtfulness of its lyrics, is, in the end, too bland and bloodless to leave a lasting impression.