Zoe Scott, Beautiful to Be Alive

Ooh, finally an album of inspirational lyrics created (according to the press release) during a “vision quest” in the Mojave desert — the supposed endeavor highlighted in her song “Caves of Possibility,” where she repeats that exact phrase countless times while throwing in a few other rhyming words such as tranquility, infinity, mystery, reality. “Deep,” mind-blowing lyrics like, “Wish I’d wake up from this superficial plastic dream,” in the song “Sacred Sex,” and “It’s beautiful to be alive, the sun in in the sky.”

God bless her. This broad wants to go deep, but it’s just not happening. After listening to this, Jewel seems like a damn visionary. A lot of the words here are just tragic; this kind of corny mystic imagery is charming coming from 1960s garage bands but doesn’t work coming from a whitebread Sheryl Crow/Joan Osborne wannabe. Listen to the Beatles “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds,” then listen to her “Desert Garden” — or don’t, but I’m sure that’s exactly what she did before she wrote it. I just hope she calls it homage.

One song resembles a third-rate B52’s, but I’m not going back to check which one. Bland. For a laugh, check the Web for her video interviewing some guru known as Sri Sri Ravi Shankar (no, not that one). Silly. For a split second, I was puzzled to find Johnny Rzeznik on lead guitar in her song “Wildflowers” but then quickly remembered he named his band “Goo Goo Dolls.” Zoe Scott’s Beautiful to be Alive is not one that I could recommend.