Lacking polish, Jewel nonetheless sparkles

By Ken Capobianco, Globe Correspondent, 10/3/2003

Jewel
At: FleetBoston Pavillionl,
Saturday night

One of the biggest stories in pop this year was the transformation of Jewel from crunchy granola folk-pop singer into sexed-up dance-floor pop tart. She exposed more flesh in publicity photos and explored big beats on her new record, "0304," in an obvious crossover move to win new fans. Many looked forward to her fall tour to see how the transformation would translate to the stage. But how Jewel will unfurl her new sound remains a mystery for now: The singer-songwriter canceled her tour because of the death early last month of her longtime bassist "T-Bone" Hannon from a stroke.

Jewel instead decided to play six solo acoustic dates, one of which was Saturday's gig at the FleetBoston Pavilion. A show for her fans, it had an improvisational feel during which Jewel dug into her songbook, took requests, and played very little from her new album.

Indeed, she reminded fans of her first area tour by asking the near sell-out crowd whether they'd seen her at the Kendall Cafe 10 years ago. Despite singing with both sauciness and heartfelt emotion, Jewel made it clear she's no Eric Clapton on the guitar. Often, she stopped midsong because she had flubbed chords. And on the new material such as "Intuition," she admitted that she had learned to play the song earlier in the day and asked the crowd not to clap along because it would break her concentration.

This was part of what made the evening enjoyable. There was little canned or rote about Jewel's performance and her glib comments on Britney Spears, hip-hugger jeans ("designed by diet pill companies"), and hitchhiking through Mexico, brought some needed levity to the proceedings. After all, two hours of solo acoustic tunes from any performer can be daunting and with someone whose music is as limited as Jewel's, it could be deadly. The songs she chose to sing from her decade-long career brought out the best in her and revealed why she has such an intimate connection with her fans. What comes through on such tunes as "Break Me" is the sincerity and emotional directness of her music. Her swooping vocal interpretations of "Hands" or "Standing Still" more than made up for some of the compositional shortcomings.

The fact that Jewel closed with her hits, "Foolish Games," "You Were Meant for Me" and "Who Will Save Your Soul" was the only hint that she had a planned-out set. The slightly off-kilter, "let's-try-this" approach to the night made it refreshing. While we'll have to wait and see what Jewel had in mind for the "0304" tour, Saturday's performance was probably what longtime fans wanted to see her do anyway.