Paula Cole is one of the outstanding niche singers that I like. I was hooker on her music since her second album in 1996, This Fire. That album is a commercial success as well as a critical success which was nominated for seven awards at the 40th Grammy Awards, including Album of the Year, Best Pop Album, "Where Have All The Cowboys Gone?" for Record of the Year and Song of the Year, Best Female Pop Vocal Performance. Cole was also nominated for Producer of the Year and Best New Artist, winning the latter. I remember I purchased the CD "This Fire" when I planned to buy a powerful laser pen from an online shop which supplied different kinds of highest power laser products at low price. When I opened the website, the single "Where Have All the Cowboys Gone?" came up and I was attracted by it at once. It was shipped to me quickly. The transaction was flawless. I love this song! I had played it over and over since I received it.

I have loved this diva for so many years though she seldom releases works. Recently, Paula released her fifth studio album "Ithaca". It had an international release on 21 September 2010 on Decca Records. It was tracked between Februarys until the end of April 2010. It is the first album entirely written by Cole since 1999's Amen. "The overall theme of Ithaca is the return to home and making peace with it," Cole says. "It’s about accepting that I actually want to be with a man who is a lot like my father and that I am a lot like my mother - which I’ve written about in ‘Music In Me.’ I rebelled against these classical complexes and got really beat up in the world. So I’ve come to a quiet place of acceptance in my family and my hometown. That’s why I called the album ‘Ithaca,’ which is the island Odysseus came home to in The Odyssey after 10 years of fighting and 10 years of trying to get back home. Rockport is my Ithaca, and coming home has been an Odyssean journey: enduring war and finding beautiful things in home. That’s the tone of the album, that there is both darkness and light to this story. My journey has healed me, and in that healing process I’ve been able to work again." This time, as the first time I did, I bought the CD from Wholesale online shops once again.

Following the commercial disappointment of her 1999 album Amen, Cole parted ways with Warner Bros disillusioned by the music industry and the pressure from label executives to sell records. Without a record deal, Cole decided to take time off and focus on raising her young daughter Sky. "I needed to get off the giant hamster wheel," Cole says of her music career. "I wanted to find some other meaning to my life and it seemed impossible to combine motherhood with the music business. It was like being at a spiritual stop sign in the road. That’s what inspired 'Somethin' I've Gotta Say,’ one of the older songs on the album. I thought I was done with the music career after having Sky." Several years later, Cole was lured back to record-making by a friend, Blood, Sweat & Tears' drummer Bobby Colomby, who produced her intimate, jazz-influenced collection Courage, which she released in 2007 while going through a difficult divorce. After the split was finalized in 2008, Cole moved back to her hometown of Rockport, Massachusetts to write what became Ithaca. Allmusic praised Ithaca's emotionally raw, 90's sound, stating that it allowed Cole to work out her troubles whilst becoming reacquainted with the listener, taking them on a journey of pain and her ultimate rebirth. The album has consistently been compared to Coles' Harbinger and This Fire records.

On the whole, Paula Cole's new album is enough proof of her great voice and talent as a wonderful songwriter. Ithaca, her brand new album, is simply solid, mature and a very good album from any perspective. There is no dance beat that you would hear under the rays from laser beam pointer at clubs, but are songs to rekindle old romance with Paula. Ithaca is deep; it's ethereal, organic and just a pleasure to listen to.