Globe Sessions (W/Sweet Child of Mine)

CD

For some fairly shallow performers, there comes a time when their craft becomes a chore, when scribbling songs for the big follow-up album turns into a black-and-white deadline. Clever composers can almost disguise this ennui, burying it in a smarmy, sunshine-beaming mix. Key word: almost. Ergo, a trial spin through clever composer Sheryl Crow's The Globe Sessions evokes the faintest hint of a feeling that grows stronger with each successive listening--there's no sense that the artist intended this material as anything more than tepid album filler. A conversation with your local supermarket checkout girl would prove far more riveting than Crow's pretentious and all-too-casual observations (set to the tune, it must be noted, of some likable, jangly hooks). "Get out the camera, take a picture / The drag queens and the freaks are all out on the town," she purrs over chucka-chucka choogling on "There Goes the Neighborhood," which is probably what any self-respecting drag queen or freak would mutter once Crow moved in, scrounging for her now-patented vicarious cool. The closest The Globe Sessions comes to any palpable sincerity is during an actually-might've-lived-it, whoops-I'm-in-trouble-again "Mississippi." Even then, Crow drowns the moment in perfectly enunciated syllables, more prissy than alleycat-prowling. Crow started out with a credible Tuesday Night Music Club pedigree, surrounded by visionaries such as David Baerwald (For this disc, she relies heavily on ex-Wire Train mainstay Jeff Trott). But they're gone, and things change, to the point where, if you support this silly sycophant with your hard-earned dollars, there's only one question that you'll need to be asked: Do you want paper or plastic? --Tom Lanham