The last time listeners encountered Jewel, the famously sensitive singer/songwriter had just performed an extreme makeover on herself, refashioning herself as a dance-pop diva on 2003's 0304. Artistically, it worked against all odds, and it did pretty well on the charts too, debuting at number two on the Billboard Hot 100, but her fans didn't necessarily warm to it, and three years later, Jewel is running away from the album she proclaimed as her "first record I enjoy listening to" ("It's fun!"), and back to safe territory with 2006's Goodbye Alice in Wonderland. Like 0304, this album comes with an explanation/apology from its auteur: "Goodbye Alice in Wonderland is the story of my life and is the most autobiographical album I have made since Pieces of You...By the end of the 13th song, if you have listened closely, you will have heard the story of the sirens song that seduced me, of a path I both followed and led, of bizarre twists and turns that opened my eyes, forcing me to find solutions so that discovering the truth would not lead to a loss of hope." And, yes, the album is indeed a song cycle, tracing her crisis of the soul in the wake of her dance-pop move, which might make Goodbye Alice in Wonderland sound pompous and self-absorbed, which it kind of is on one level; after all, albums that find an artist examining the fallout of a commercial success that they were a willing participant in are kind of narcissistic. But even if Goodbye is a bit of an unwitting star-trip -- Jewel may be trying to run from stardom, but the issues she explores here are too autobiographical, too much like diary entries to resonate deeply on a larger scale -- it doesn't mean the album doesn't work. In fact, as a piece of music and as a coherent set of songs, it's Jewel's strongest yet. Assisted by producer Rob Cavallo -- who has produced records for Michelle Branch and the Goo Goo Dolls, along with every Green Day album since 1995's Nimrod -- Jewel has created her most sonically appealing record, one that has plenty of different shades and textures. This keeps her ceaseless introspection from sounding like excessive navel-gazing, but it also helps draw out the variety within the songs themselves, which range from the meandering ballad of the title track to the ruminative, moody "Last Dance Rodeo" to the blatantly Dylanesque phrasing of "Stephenville, TX" to a trio of her best pop songs in "Again and Again," "Only One Too," and "Words Get in the Way." True, Jewel still has a tendency to spin out lyrics that are embarrassingly precious, but as a writer she's never been stronger, particularly in terms of the construction of the songs; these are tight, sturdy, melodic songs that are among her most memorable. And not only are the individual moments strong, but they add up to a cohesive, satisfying whole. In that sense, it's not altogether dissimilar to 0304, which she may be apologizing for now, but prior to this album, it was the only one of her records that held together from beginning to end. Goodbye Alice in Wonderland may have an entirely different feel and intent than its glitzy predecessor, but like 0304, it is proof that even if Jewel doesn't have as high a profile, or perhaps as large an audience, as she did in 1996, she's a better songwriter and record-maker than she was at the outset of her career.

Last time out, Jewel called on dance beats and pop irony to save her from singer-songwriter tedium. Goodbye Alice in Wonderland, her sixth album, restores some of the tedium, sprinkling acoustic introspection into folk-pop tunes gratuitously beefed up with studio gloss and song-doctor steroids. The result is mildly icky, with Jewel murmuring about the "inertia of loneliness" and stretching her thin voice past its limits on the huge choruses. A handful of songs -- including the breezy, pretty title track -- work up some palatable L.A. pop, but those moments are surrounded by singer-songwriter cliches and painfully precious asides. The most unfortunate sequence starts with "Good Day," where Jewel stages an early-morning conversation with herself in a baby-doll murmur, then follows up with a warbling rocker about how Hollywood is full of phonies and crazies. Goodbye Alice in Wonderland might keep Jewel on the charts, but its bright come-ons sound both overdone and undercooked.

Jewel's sixth album is written and sequenced as a chronological exploration of her rags-to-riches journey from a ranch in Alaska to big, bad Los Angeles and back. After the poorly received rhythmic dance of 2003's "0304," "Goodbye Alice in Wonderland" returns Jewel to her folk/pop roots, serving up her usual host of poetic metaphors for lessons learned and observations on humanity. Gorgeously produced by Rob Cavallo with a dominant palette of guitars and keyboards, the set's strongest tracks are among Jewel's best. Hit single "Again and Again" percolates with signature vim, while "Good Day," "Fragile Heart" (a new take from its first appearance on "0304") and "Long Slow Slide" are as astute as they are insatiably melodic. Elsewhere, the autobiographical "Stephenville, TX" is so confessional that it tells the artist's story like a one-on-one conversation. Mighty fine work.

The word "confessional" is frequently applied to folk of all stripes, including folk-rock and folk-pop, which is where Jewel comes in. Even within the bounds of folk, however, her music is more nakedly confessional than most. (Too nakedly, some have carped.) Along with a coterie of Nashville pros, she began her latest musical journey by laying down another introspective song cycle in the vein of 1995's Pieces of You. Dissatisfied with the results, the Texas-based artist scrapped that effort and re-recorded with Rob Cavallo (Green Day). This lends her sixth album the expected rock edge, but Jewel hasn't changed her spots. If anything, she sounds more like, well, Jewel than she did on dance-oriented departure 0304. She’s still pop star ("Fragile Heart"), sensitive folkie ("Long Slow Slide"), and scrappy country gal ("Stephenville, TX"). Her Joni Mitchell-esque soprano soars as high as ever, with more of a sardonic Dylan chaser than before. What's changed is that maturity has granted Jewel, now in her early 30s, greater perspective--"Growing up is not an absence of dreaming," she states in the title track--and a sense of humor missing from her more earnest early work. On "Satellite," for instance, written when she was 18, but revamped since, she notes that "the Pope," "rock and roll," "Valium," even "Miss Cleo" can't fix her broken heart. In her statement about the album, Jewel claims that, after years of ups and downs, she's "not broken, just more myself."

Say what you will about Jewel, that much-mocked poetess with the burlesque body, but it turns out that she's at least halfway in on the joke: So why not follow me, the blond bombshell deity?/I'll sell you neat ideas without big words/And a little bit of cleavage to help wash it all down, she croons tartly on Goodbye Alice in Wonderland track Stephenville, TX. Sincerity is still her main trade, as are showbiz-as-Hades tropes and romantic confessionals. But somewhere beneath the Lilith earnestness glints something sharper.

After more than a decade as pop's acoustic-guitar ingénue, Jewel unveils a real "coming of age" saga: the emotionally raw, and surprisingly searching Goodbye Alice in Wonderland. While there are upbeat interludes -- the breezy "Again and Again" is awash in her trademark romanticism -- the album boasts a notable number of glimpses through a jagged and cracked looking glass. On the bittersweet "Long Slow Slide," for starters, she spins a poignant tale, rife with circus imagery, about the price of stardom. The acoustic guitars that accompany her on that tune are ubiquitous here. Sometimes -- as on "Stephenville, TX," a brow-furrowing denunciation of celebrity culture -- they chafe with the rough edges of old-school protest folk. But more often, Jewel conjures sonic solace, as on "Fragile Heart," a gentle pulse of a song recalling her earliest hits, and the wounded "Satellite," which takes a detour through the seedy back alleys that run behind Hollywood's glitzy boulevards. While the subject matter is often dark, Jewel manages to home in on her characters' humanity and the glimmers of hope that illuminate their perilous situations, rather than send them down the rabbit hole. And that spark of real storytelling gives Wonderland the sort of sunset radiance that's easy to sit back and bask in.