Sheryl Crow: Detours

Sheryl Crow has taken lots of knocks for her

political-talk proclivities: The ever-loveable Andrew Sullivan dubbed her a

"brain-dead peacenik in sequins," Karl Rove famously snipped "I don't work for

you, I work for the American people" after they sparred over global warming,

and conservatives everywhere snickered heartily when she suggested rationing

toilet paper. Given how much political nonsense her male peers get away with,

it's tempting to cry sexism—but it's better to just listen. Detours, Crow's sixth LP, is

packed with political and personal screeds; she laments breast cancer, a broken

engagement, a new son, a fumbled presidency, broken levees, and mushrooming gas

prices with equal aplomb. But these are the sorts of things Crow has always

written about. (In 2002's hit "Soak Up The Sun," she presciently mentioned

rising gas prices.) And Detours isn't a huge leap forward, though it does benefit

from a reunion with Tuesday Night Music Club producer-writer Bill

Bottrell. Crow's earnest, adult-contemporary crooning isn't as musically

subversive as that of her protest-singer predecessors, but some of the

scrappier cuts here ("God Bless This Mess," "Shine Over Babylon") are genuinely

compelling.