Listening to it one would never suspect, but Jewel Kilcher’s sixth album apparently suffered a fraught gestation. Deeming the first batch of recording sessions too anaemic, Jewel – known to you as the world’s most famous living Alaskan – scrapped the project and hired Green Day producer Rob Cavallo to lend her songs a patina of post-grunge ooomph.
One shudders to imagine how soulless the material sounded before Cavallo’s intervention. As matters stand, Goodbye Alice In Wonderland – billed as a concept project chronicling Jewel’s rise from biker bar songstress to multi-platinum popster – is frequently stultifying. Jewel has a sweet way with melody but, lyrically, is in hock to the drabbest of folk clichés.
Occasionally, as on the title track, Kilcher appears to be straining towards an ethereal sensibility: deep down, one senses, she’d rather be compared to Tori Amos and Regina Spektor than to the decaf MOR warblers with whom she's frequently lumped. Sadly, these moments are rare – for too much of this record, Jewel is content to throw the sort of empty singer-songwriter shapes we’ve come to expect of Sheryl Crow or Alanis Morissette. In pop, sometimes a little recklessness goes a long way.