From jazz to deconstructed pop: Paula Cole enjoys ‘Ithaca’ resurgence

I have real affection for perfect little pop gems.

In the 1990s, singer/songwriter Paula Cole was everywhere. She charmed mainstream audiences with her easy, romantic-confessional pop tunes. She basically pioneered what now has a cubbyhole all its own: emo. But she did it without sacrificing pop’s essential melodic beat.

After winning the world in 1997, following a “Best New Artist” Grammy, the Rockport, MA native disappeared to raise a family, presumably for good. But a tough divorce, some hard life lessons, and a return to her roots produced two trademarked Paula Cole albums, 2007’s “Courage” and 2010’s “Ithaca” – with a difference.

The spare, reflective “Courage” reached back to her Berklee College of Music, on scholarship, jazz roots. It’s full of soul-searching questions and bottomless sorrow, informed by an ongoing divorce and a shattering of ideals. The songs, typical of Cole, flow lyrically from one thought to another, with sweeping, string and metallic musical echoes. “Lonely Town” goes as jazz as straight-ahead jazz can get in a late-night club, piano and voice, a trickle-down, plaintive flutter dabbling with hints and tones of American Songbook classicism. “Hard To Be Soft” starts off as a kicky Latin number, akin to the 1960s bossa nova, "The Girl from Ipanema.” Both songs sound happy, uplifting, musically, but at closer listen, they’re actually quite longing, unrequited, and bereft.

“Ithaca” is more the Cole that exploded on the music scene with her breakthrough 1997 pop album, “This Fire” (“Where Have All The Cowboys Gone?,” “I Don’t Want to Wait”). There’s less contemplative, quiet acoustic and more hard-driving electric guitar, more rock to the pop, more assertiveness to the style, more answers to the questions. “Courage was very gentle and eclectic, but I have real affection for perfect little pop gems. And I needed the sex, wail, and anger of electric guitar on certain songs, so this album is definitely more rock, pop, and soul-influenced. It combines the styles of This Fire and Amen, but is presented from a wiser woman’s perspective.”

Wait, Paula Cole does jazz? She’s always been known as a pop singer—with a little country, a little folk, a little adult contemporary. But jazz? In Boston’s Berklee, Cole thought she could get a handle on jazz singing and improvisation—it’s what she studied—but found herself straying to another kind of music that opened up more variety, more choices, a big, open, blank slate. “I wanted to get inside the chord structure of songs, so that I could improvise inside the changes, but it wasn't meant to be... I began writing my own songs, and it took me down another path.”

Despite a choice offer as a Berklee senior to branch out with a jazz label, Cole had other things in mind and would patiently play the role of the generic working musician on wedding and waitress detail until she could explore and expand her own voice further. She’s come far with her music to re-embrace jazz and incorporate its basic sensibility with the fire of rock, the depth of soul, and the groove of pop.

 She’s back and gigging fresh. Check her out at NYC-Soho’s City Winery March 22, 7:30 p.m.-10:30 p.m., 155 Varick St., at Vandam St. Call (212) 608-0555 for more info.

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