Tracy Chapman: New Beginning : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

Tracy Chapman is concerned on her fourth album, New Beginning. She frets about the environment. She worries about the state of modern relation-ships. She's even anxious about the fate of our very souls. Normally such solicitousness is an ominous sign. Proselytizing tends to bring out the bloat in most artists. Call it Sermon-on-the-Mount-itis.

It's a fate that befalls Chapman for much of New Beginning. Songs like "The Promise" and, most egregiously, "The Rape of the World" may be well-meaning, but the writing is hackneyed. There isn't much on the entire record that approaches the incisive wit of Chapman's first single, "Fast Car," and her overlooked second album, Crossroads.

Yet New Beginning succeeds on the sheer strength of Chapman's voice. Even on a precious tune like "Smoke and Ashes," her sheer conviction and sturdy vocal timbre never waver. Much respect must go to Don Gehman, her co-producer. Gehman not only utilizes Chapman's regular band, he also gives them a sharp, midsize-venue sound. It's a resonance similar to his production for the Huey Lewis and the News of our time, Hootie and the Blowfish.

But Chapman is a far more expressive singer than Hootie's Darius Rucker. And New Beginning is more than a troubadour discovering the joys of auditorium rock. It's about experimentation: the country twang in "Cold Feet," the tough, bluesy grooves of "Tell It Like It Is" (not the Aaron Neville classic).

It's also about moments: the passionate way Chapman repeats "I believe" three times in "Heaven's Here on Earth" or the weary optimism she displays in the refrain of "I'm Ready." It's these flickers of aural – not verbal – poetry that redeem Chapman's hummable homilies. Her angelic voice, aided and abetted by Gehman's heavenly production, is New Beginning's saving grace.