Tracy Chapman: Crossroads : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

Last year's debut album by Tracy Chapman held the promise that the Boston-based singer-songwriter is that rarest of artists: one whose lyric and musical vision transcends the normal boundaries of category and intent. Chapman's impressive second album, Crossroads, affirms that her debut was no fluke; yet Crossroads is so similar to Tracy Chapman that it seems less like a second album than the second part of its predecessor. Most frustratingly, it fails to answer the question of whether Chapman – who came on the scene as a mature and full-blown artist – is capable of leading popular music someplace where it's never been before.

Chapman's ascent to the forefront of the music scene has been breathtaking in its speed. Just three months after the release of her first album, Chapman performed for a worldwide television audience of millions at the Nelson Mandela Freedomfest; by September 1988, she was headlining Amnesty International's global Human Rights Now! Tour along with Bruce Springsteen, Peter Gabriel and Sting. That Chapman could move such a broad audience on the strength of one album is testimony to the power of her vision and clarity of style. Considering Chapman's depth of talent, one would like to think that her artistic success is based on a willingness to take chances rather than on having found a comfortable style.

More than anything, the promise that Chapman holds as an artist is engendered in her composition "Fast Car." A "Born to Run" for the disenfranchised, it proved unequivocably that Chapman is capable of building universal themes out of the most straightforward and unadorned stylistic components. Perhaps to her detriment, its brilliance justifies applying a yardstick to Chapman's work that few in pop music can measure up to.

By that or any other yardstick, Crossroads is hardly a failure. With the exception of the title track and the song "All That You Have Is Your Soul," Chapman neatly avoids one of the most common pitfalls of the Second Album: plumbing the angst of sudden fame. The self-indulgent complaint of the hand-wringing sensitive soul caught in the commercial crush of success is often heard when, after a lifetime of crafting songs for a first album that proves a success, an artist discovers the only condition he or she now has the opportunity to consider is life in the spotlight. That's not the stuff upon which work of universal appeal is constructed, and more often it leads down an insular and blind alley.

Surprisingly, "Crossroads" proves one of Chapman's finest moments on record. If the song's lyric setup – that the record executives and fans now placing so many demands on Chapman are demons intent on dragging her soul to hell – is too narrow, it is saved by the song's rich arrangement and heartfelt delivery. Like the rest of the album, "Crossroads" breaks little new ground for Chapman musically. But its subtly shaded percussion, pizzicato violin and lilting accordion give new muscle to Chapman's previously bareboned presentation.

As with Tracy Chapman, the ten songs on Crossroads focus on social inequality and personal relationships. "Freedom Now," which Chapman performed on the Amnesty International tour, and "Born to Fight" are among the album's best political offerings – plain-spoken and irrefutable. "Subcity," which speaks of the gulf between America's rich and poor, is Dylanesque in its use of harmonica but fails to pack the lyric punch of the last album's "Fast Car" or "Across the Lines," which both depicted similar terrain. And when Chapman says the problem is that "government and big business pull the purse strings," vision is replaced by rhetoric.

Similarly, love songs like "Be Careful With My Heart" and "This Time" are succinct and thoughtful yet strikingly similar in tone to earlier compositions like "Baby Can I Hold You" and "For You."

Since the release of her first album, Chapman has toured exclusively as a solo artist. Yet Crossroads boasts many of the musicians who appeared on her debut, including bassist Larry Klein, drummer Denny Fongheiser and keyboardist Jack Holder. Perhaps the nightly interaction that touring together would have brought could have taken Chapman in a new direction. And producer David Kershenbaum, crucial in solidifying the acoustic-electric fusion of Chapman's debut album, seems satisfied to simply replicate it.

Crossroads is the kind of self-assured, mature album that few artists can make. It's just that Chapman has now made it twice – and it's troubling to consider that for all her talent this could be as far as Chapman is willing to venture. As she puts it on "Crossroads," "I'm trying to protect what I keep inside/All the reasons why I live my life." But examining all those reasons is precisely what the artistic process is about.