(Pop) Jann Arden - Uncover Me 2 - 2011, MP3, V0

Jann Arden
Uncover Me 2
Universal
4 out of five stars
Jann Arden’s 2007 covers album was undeniably sincere – you could hear echoes of Peace Train, At Seventeen and You’re So Vain in her own writing – but aside from a moody overhaul of Love Is a Battlefield, there was a certain safety to the performances. So it’s a treat to hear Arden singing without a net on Uncover Me 2. The defiance and strength she brings to You Don’t Own Me is almost alarming, she’s more playful on Glory of Love than she has ever been before, and the astonishing final sustained note on the Beach Boys’ In My Room sounds like an amen.
If Arden is delivering some of the most dynamic vocals of her career, she’s receiving sympathetic production to match, with Bob Rock coaxing kaleidoscopic colours out of economical instrumentation.
The song choices are far more daring than they were on the first go-round: the spoken-word passages in the Leiber-Stoller curio Is That All There Is? are more cheerfully demented than kitschy here, and while Arden doesn’t fit the stereotype of a Smiths fan, Last Night I Dreamt That Somebody Loved Me carries the same lovelorn trauma that binds her discography. Add an original composition (Mr. McLennen) that ranks among her most vivacious happy/sad songs, and Uncover Me 2 refutes the law of diminishing returns for sequels.
Podworthy: You Don’t Own Me