Tracy Chapman - Matters of the Heart (1992)

After an attention-getting debut (courtesy of the 1988 single "Fast Car"), things seemed to go quiet for Tracy Chapman, who found her style of earnest, issue-driven folk radically at odds with the commercial mainstream; she was portrayed as humourless, even sanctimonious. Nevertheless, she continued to make albums, and these--while never exactly setting the charts alight--nonetheless yielded their own, quiet pleasures. Matters of the Heart was her third full-length release, and seemed appropriately-titled, since it found Chapman moving away from social reportage (though "Bang Bang Bang" makes an eloquent plea for gun control), toward more personal themes. "Open Arms" and "The Love That You Had" are more intensely emotive than anything she'd recorded to date, while the title track is tinged with a sense of wistful melancholy. As ever, though, her greatest asset is that honeyed murmur of a voice, capable of investing even the most simple utterance with a gravity and wisdom all its own. --Andrew McGuire