SOPHIE B. HAWKINS

The Crossing

[Lightyear]

Sophie B. Hawkins, best known for the 1992 sleeper hit “Damn I Wish I Was Your Lover” and 1995’s adult-contemporary staple “As I Lay Me Down,” has completed her transformation from young spunky performer to cool, assured vet with The Crossing. Hawkins pulls triple duty on her first album in eight years, acting as producer, engineer and multi-instrumentalist while recording entirely in her home studio. Hawkins’ incisive lyrics hint at a spiritual awakening driven by the birth of her son in 2008, just one of the ways in which experience has clearly forced her to examine life from a variety of angles. She sounds bruised and wary on “Missing,” a tender tribute to her late father, and stubbornly defiant on “Gone Baby,” a folk ballad written with Mary Steenburgen. Hawkins considers the heart’s mysterious ways on the album’s centerpiece, “Dream Street & Chance,” a torch song that preaches the power of self-acceptance. It’s the sound of someone wishing for more enduring pleasures than being anyone’s lover. –Blake Boldt