★★★★★
Since returning to music in 2007 after a self-imposed hiatus, Massachusetts-native Paula Cole made a pair of respectable discs for the resurrected Decca label before deciding to brave the indie waters with Raven, a kickstarter-funded project out this week on her own 675 Records. The new eleven-song cycle is easily her most comfortable and self-assured release to date, though it harkens back to her 1994 debut, Harbinger and its watershed follow-up, This Fire...
- www.americansongwriter.com
2013-04-25
★★★★★
Paula Cole is perhaps one of the greatest jazz voices caught in modern-day times. What most vocalists hope to achieve within their art, Paula Cole can do in one song and, more often than not, in one take. With an ability to showcase seemingly effortless and incredible range and control, Cole has achieved mainstream success, winning the Grammy Award for "Best New Artist" in 1997, and garnering several platinum records. Cole is back and better than ever with Courage (Decca, 2007)...
- www.allaboutjazz.com
2010-08-20
★★★★★
Touring two years ago as Peter Gabriel's backup singer must have loosened up former prom queen Paula Cole. In This Fire, piano pounderCole announces she's cast off the sweet safeness of her 1994debut with a nude cover shot and the lyrical andvocal teeth-baring of her first track, "Tiger" . A feisty poet with a soaring voice and a funky groove,Cole seems to be nipping at Tori Amos' heels. A-
- ew.com
2009-06-12
★★★★★
Lilith Fair has folded its tents, and the teen-pop genie has escaped from her bottle to take over the charts. Threatened with possible extinction, Paula Cole has created a follow-up to her double-platinum breakthrough, This Fire, that -- like many of the Lilith crew's latest efforts -- is at once more pop and more adventurous, less folksy and self-absorbed...
- www.rollingstone.com
2009-06-08
★★★★★
Before anyone knew she'd go platinum, netcrit Glenn McDonald presciently declared Cole the new queenpin of a female tradition he traced from Kate Bush through Peter Gabriel, Melissa Etheridge, and Sarah McLachlan. Although McDonald sanely declared this genre the obverse of male-identified metal, a skeptic with no tolerance for subpeaks in either would like to note that each is beholden to "classical" precepts of musical dexterity and genitalia-to-the-wall expression...
- www.robertchristgau.com
2009-06-06
★★★★★
After more than a decade of relative stardom, Emily Saliers and Amy Ray aren't about to mess with their formula: Divided about evenly between strident, rough-edged, down-home attitude (songs sung by Ray) and soft, wispy, lilting balladry (songs sung by Saliers), Indigo Girls' albums have gotten awfully predictable...
- www.avclub.com
2009-03-23
★★★★★
Paula Cole got her start as a backup singer for Peter Gabriel, and though Gabriel returns the favor on This Fire's "Hush, Hush, Hush," Cole's sophomore album is all about the singer and her myriad neuroses and artsy impulses. Like its promising predecessor, 1994's Harbinger, This Fire is occasionally marred by an angst overload and Cole's tendency to over-emote on tragically titled songs like "Nietzsche's Eyes...
- www.avclub.com
2009-03-21
★★★★★
Once ubiquitous, as her "Where Have All the Cowboys Gone" was a staple on adult alternative radio as "I Don't Wanna Wait" served as the soundtrack to turn-of-the-millennium teen soap Dawson's Creek, Paula Cole suddenly disappeared after her third album, Amen, failed to live up to the commercial expectations set by her 1996 breakthrough, This Fire...
- music.aol.com
2008-08-28
Loading...
