This is going to be one of my favorite Jewel albums - stylistically it's up my alley with my general music tastes already. When I hear some of her previous albums, I think, "Wow, Jewel has certainly changed a lot over the years." However, with this one, while it's very different, at the same time it sounds like a very natural progression from the artist that released PoY 25+ years ago. I feel like this belongs with PoY and PutP-- the three records just seem to 'fit' together for me.
This album has the best sounding arrangements and vocals out of all of her previous albums. It's just very... musical and easy on the ears. My favorite tracks are the first and last ones, and Half Life. Nothing but Love is like old school rock combined with a 90s hit. Long Way Around has already gotten a lot of plays from me, it's classic Jewel but at her finest musically. I wouldn't normally be into a track called "Dance Sing Laugh Love" but its just so catchy I can't not like it. No More Tears sounds great but I also prefer the solo version. When You Loved Me sounds much better than I thought after hearing it on a live stream-- it sounds very PoY, and also evokes Leonard Cohen and Neil Young. The tuning of the guitar on Almost also evokes PoY for me, but from a much more grown up artist.
The overarching theme of this album seems to be moving on from divorce and feeling joy again, whereas PutP was very much in the mourning phase-- so the acoustic tracks fit in well against the bigger productions. She has been so good over the past few years, and I think she knows it. I know she has always said she was being authentic with all of her albums, but I really feel that more than ever over the last few years after all the super slick pop and country albums which I enjoyed but didn't connect with as much. She has tuned into what makes her stand above similar artists and she's capitalizing on it. I'm looking forward to see what's next.
