Product Description

Veteran, guitar-playing songstress Sheryl Crow follows up 2005's 'Wildflower' with 'Detours'. Packed full of her trademark beautiful melodies and catchy, infectious lyrics, the album is sure to please Sheryl Crow fans, old and new. Singlesinclude 'Shine Over Babylon'.

Track Listing

1. God Bless This Mess
2. Shine Over Babylon
3. Love Is Free
4. Peace Be Upon Us
5. Gasoline
6. Out Of Our Heads
7. Detours
8. Now That You're Gone
9. Drunk With The Thought Of You
10. Diamond Ring
11. Motivation
12. Make It Go Away (Radiation Song)
13. Love Is All There Is
14. Lullaby For Wyatt
15. Rise Up

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #805 in Music
• Released on: 2008-02-18
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 57 minutes

Amazon.co.uk Review
Thematically, Detours may not seem like much of a detour to Sheryl Crow fans. Her politics pour out of these songs the way you might expect them to if you caught wind of her epic cross-country bus trip, with the activist Laurie David, to promote environmental awareness months prior to this release. From the quiet, faraway-sounding opener "God Bless This Mess"--a novel in a song--to the catchy but thought-provoking "Gasoline", it's clear that Crow has more on her mind these days than soaking up the sun or having a little fun, à la the Tuesday Night Music Club era. Yet there's not a groan-worthy song on this standout rock/pop/folk/blues album. If the themes are heavy (in addition to the political songs, there's an almost painfully tender lullaby for her son Wyatt and one, "Make It Go Away [Radiation Song]," that touches on her breast-cancer experience), the mood is cathartic, determined, hopeful at times and sad at others. "Now That You're Gone" grabs at clarity through the clouds of a devastating love affair and gets it, and "Peace Be Upon Us" picks apart pettiness and arrives at a wide-minded beauty. George Harrison seems present in some of these songs, especially the more personal ones ("Drunk with the Thought of You," "Love Is All There Is"). And that may be the highest compliment that Sheryl Crow, who seems to admire his gentle soul and shares his big heart, could ask for. --Tammy La Gorce

Customer Reviews

not back to her best,but back on track.
In short if your looking for the dark,grainy guitar led songs that she wrote up as far as the brilliant "Globe Sessions" you'll be disappointed.On the other hand she's returnded to a more earthy sound,with a bit of a hippy commune vibe.
Personally I'm just glad she's got away from that over produced bubble gum pop-rock commercial rubbish of "c'mon c'mon".

Much Better
This album signals a return to form for Sheryl Crow after her disappointing 'Wildflower' album. It is largely reminiscent of the hippy style of her first two albums, but musical times have moved on since then and so I doubt it will be as successful.

It does suffer from a number of flaws - sometimes a bit over political, sometimes a bit over personal - she gets away with it unless the music isn't up to scratch. This is the case with the lo-fi and thankfully short opener 'God Bless This Mess', the simply grating 'Diamond Ring', the slightly average 'Drunk With The Thought of You' and the sickly pointless (to me) 'Lullaby To Wyatt'.

The remaining 10 tracks however are very good. The 5 star moments for me are the more commercial ones such as 'Out of Our Heads' (surely this should have been the first single), 'Now That You're Gone' (there is a bit of ELO in here) and 'Motivation'. And surprisingly 'Make It Go Away', related to her own cancer battle, works really well and is a powerful piece which I guess many people will be able to relate to. Everything else gets 4 stars, despite the fact that she at times sounds like just another pop star railing against politicians about global warming, wars etc etc.

Fortunately, where the music is good, I find myself able to let the words wash over me and it becomes a highly enjoyable pop/rock/folk album.

Bill Bottrell, you made my day
It can't be a coincidence that Bill Bottrell produced Sheryl Crow's first two albums ('Tuesday Night Music Club' and 'Sheryl Crow'), and he also produced these most recent 'Detours'.

The reason I say it's not coincidental is that these three albums are stand-out bests of her work, with 'The Globe Sessions' following a close second, but with 'C'mon C'mon' and 'Wildflower' trailing distantly behind, lagging in the land of overarrangement and self-indulgence.

'Detours' is fresh, with exciting sounds, bold choices (see: first track), and lyrics which, for a change, work a lot better to music than when you see them on the page. When I first scanned Crow's lyrics (before listening) I was moderately worried about the album, but it makes a refreshing change for the music and production to make the lyrics both make sense and not come across as either a) over-sentimental, b) self-indulgent, or c) overly 'message'-y. Too much 'message' was certainly a risk with this fairly political album, but like all good gospel and soul music (not that that's the genre of this album -- I'm drawing a parallel here), sometimes the sugar makes the medicine go down.

Who knows? -- Maybe by actually producing an album whose _sounds_ people will listen to in wonderment, Crow and Bottrell will, in the background (where it belongs) enable some political impact by happy collision.