Raven by Paula Cole | Album Review
Paula Cole rises up with extremely personal and powerful autumnal sound of Raven.
Paula Cole’s music has always been something I have enjoyed listening to. I like that she’s willing to take risks both sonically and lyrically. Her interview with Fresh Grass around the release of her album Raven was quite enlightening.
She said she wanted to make an album somewhere between Emmylou Harris and PJ Harvey, rootsy but with teeth.
“So now I can kind of have a slower build…It’s a second career. And I feel like it’s a more authentic one. Humbler, indeed… My eyes have been opened…I’m so unbelievably heartened. I felt like I wanted this album to be a little bit Emmylou and a little bit PJ Harvey.”
Cole states that she feels her career was all a little bit too much too fast. Her second album’s success, a Grammy for Best New Artist in 1997, and the theme song to Dawson’s Creek blasted her to the top almost overnight.
It was the heavy criticism, and her critically panned 3rd album Amen that would see Paula retreating to focus on herself and her family. It would not be until 2007 that we would see a return of Cole with her 4th album, Courage.
The record I connected with more is her 2010 record Ithaca. “Music in Me” felt like her fire was burning brighter than ever. Raven would be new territory for Paula as she would start a Kickstarter to fund the project. It would receive $25,000 over its funding goal.
The artist's freedom she has on this record really works in her favor. In the interview with Fresh Grass, she stated several of the tracks were from old cassette tapes her mother saved from her youth. Using these tracks and some other unreleased/b-side material feels like Cole is taking a fresh coat of paint to the paintings she’s made over the years. Her writing has become much stronger over time, and paired with the crisp, more acoustic backing, creates a sonic landscape that echos the album’s cover. It’s cool, wild, and free.
Let’s get a bird’s eye view of what Raven offers.
We open the open on “Life Goes On.” The song appears to be an autobiographical tale of Cole and her family as she was growing up. She opens up on the struggles of her mother when she was born, “Moved into the trailer park in Ithaca, New York/ Took another job while he was going to school/ Another mouth to feed/ Well, that was me.”
Each verse seems to take into the lives of each of Paula’s family members. The chorus has some tracings of Joni Mitchell’s “Circle Game” in describing the passage of time around those in her life. The song is a soft singer/songwriter affair that really comes to life by the chorus. It’s an okay song, but compared to the rest of the album, it lacks some of the same luster.
One of the most semi-pop forward tracks on the album is the uplifting “Strong Beautiful Woman.” The song is very much on the adult contemporary edge of the genre.
Cole writes from the perspective of a young teenage girl who needs to hear the beauty and strength she possesses. The chorus, “You are a strong, beautiful woman/ So don’t let the world let you down/ Look within yourself and remember who carried you forth,” acts as a mantra to keep Cole strong through some of the most trying moments in her life.
Although not my favorite on the record, the song isn’t cheesy in its aim to keep the women it seeks to reach empowered.
“Eloise” is a track that was written for Soloman Burke but would ultimately be passed on. Cole would fashion the track up for this project. The song takes on a folksy feel through the forward banjo playing. Paula pens an interesting murder yarn around jealousy and a failing relationship, “And you weren’t alone in my truck/ And then I don’t’ know what came over/ Cause I don’t’ remember the blood/ From the bullet holes, the handcuffs, the cops.”
Alongside this tale of betrayal and lost love is also a story of forgiveness. Hearing a more Americana-tinged song from Paula is a welcomed change of course in her songwriting repertoire.
“Surrow-on-the-Hudson” details the fall of Cole’s marriage in 2007 to her ex-husband Hassan Hakmoun. Cole uses a palette of dark purples and reds to cast the song in a sort of country adult contemporary sound. She anchors the beginning of the end around the overwhelming attention she was getting around the zenith of her career.
The faltering of her marriage and subsequent ache is displayed through the hollow feeling she has, “And I look outside my window and all I see is you/ Sorrow-on-the-Hudson, sunsets withering West/ I wake up, palpitations screaming in my breast/ I will get over this, I will grow past you.” Paula brings vulnerability well through such a personal track.
“Manitoba” is one of two songs from the tapes that Cole’s mother, Stephanie, found for her. The visual of the harsh winters of the northern reaches of this province is used as a metaphor for a partner’s apathetic treatment.
The geographer in me has to note that Manitoba lies below the Arctic Circle, “Falling North, of the Arctic Circle inside of you,” but the sentiment still works as a play off the detachment of this person, “Walking through your Manitoba, walking through your Manitoba/ We’re as dead as doors, we’re as dead as ashes.”
Cole expands upon her trademark quiet ferocious sound that This Fire crafted perfectly. To play off the dejected feeling, Paula uses a gentle rush of percussion and a chilling piano melody that adds to the frigid emotion.
The acoustic styling of “Scream” reminds me in a way of some of Lisa Loeb’s more country stylings on Tails. Cole navigates this sound wonderfully. It’s a welcomed autumnal wash of buttercream yellow on the record.
Paula is trying to find her voice and regain her power in this toxic relationship. Through her shrinking self, she’s trying to muster up the strength to scream out against this treatment, “I’ve gotta pull myself through this/ There is a way to peace/ Discovering the dormant beast… Open up my feelings/ God where is my scream?”
“Imaginary Man” is the second song off the tapes Paula’s mother found. The song was originally written in 1991 before she even got the offer to tour with Peter Gabriel.
I hear some threads of what would be some of the milker sounds of her debut. Cole does a wonderful job making this song feel large and dynamic. The story seems to call to the lover she has yet to meet but sees in the many things around her.
She explodes gorgeously into the chorus, “I look around me, the crowd about me/ There’s nobody to call to, nobody to hear me/ I’ll turn my back on them, I’m giving you my heart/ There’s somebody who loves me, who’s in my arms,” making a clarion cry for one she’s setting her heart out for (the true love she’s yet to meet). For a six-minute song, it doesn’t feel like it, which is a treat.
“Billy Joe” is a re-recording of a b-side off of the “I Believe in Love” single from Paula’s 3rd album Amen. The song was one of my favorites from those sessions that I thought deserved a place on the record over some of the others.
Cole tones down some of the original alt-rock tone of the song with a softer, more acoustic approach. It may have a softer sound, but the song hasn’t lost its original edge. She tells the story of a woman whose many inner demons have begun to leech out into her relationship, “Billy Joe, I cast a shadow, from the darkness in my soul/ Billy Joe, you think you know, once burned twice sociological/ Billy Joe, this lonely road, conjures up the inner ghosts/ Billy Joe, I let you go, spread my legs to ease this woe.”
I think the song really benefits from this more folk/blues reinvention.
My favorite song on the record is “Secretary.” Cole provides beatboxed percussion, which she hasn’t widely done since her debut. Alongside the dark electric melody, it gives the song a foreboding sexuality.
Paula sings on the act of submission through the guise of secretary, “I’ll be your secretary, oh/ I’ll reach up towards the highest shelf and/ You’ll sidle up behind me/ I do not know you’re there/ Until I feel your hands are sliding.” This is role is reversed by the third verse, “You’ll be my secretary, oh/ Now come and be my Florence Nightingale…
Cole plays off this steaming sexuality beautifully throughout the song. She erupts into a serge of electric guitars and drums at the chorus. It’s a great alternative song on a more gently moving project.
“Why Don’t You Go” has a beautiful subtle country tone. Cole’s vocals are pristine alongside the gentle wash of acoustic guitars and crying electric guitars. It casts the image of a lonely twilight. Cole takes on the position of a woman so racked by her depression and low self-esteem she doesn’t see why her partner would stay with her through her doldrums. She even gives him permission to leave her in this pit, “Why don’t you go a-lookin’ boy/ And find another girl/ Why don’t you go.”
Cole does such a fantastic job writing a truly heartbreaking tale of a woman who is so lost in her own sorrows she can’t see the light he sees in her.
Paula finished out the project with the cool “Red Corsette.” The song uses the imagery of this red corset as the many bindings, either mentally or societal, that Cole trying to keep from crushing her, “Whalebone from the killing of the largest peaceful being/ Is blue and bound around my waist and will not let me sing/ I cannot breathe, I feel too faint just as they’d have me be… I am shedding off this, shredding off this/ Red Corsette.” The whimpering of clarinets, solemn piano melody and Cole's siren-like backing vocals sell the emotional drive to escape this constricting pull that keeps her from soaring.
Raven really feels like a second wind in her musical career. Some of her prior albums didn’t really capture me in the same way this project has. This Fire it is not, and I don’t want it to be.
It burns in with a different fire than her Grammy-winning sophomore release. She’s cool but intense. Her songwriting has evolved beautifully from the beginning of her career. It’s extremely personal in a way that really connects the artist to the songs on the album. The second half of the album is where Paula’s work shines the brightest.
My favorites:
- “Eloise”
- “Scream”
- “Imaginary Man”
- “Billy Joe”
- “Secretary”
- “Red Corsette”
My overall rating: 7.5 out of 10.
