With a style that’s sometimes stripped back, but always silky and smoky, the hugely talented, golden-voiced artist from Lambeth of a Bangladeshi and Irish heritage returns with her first LP since the acclaimed 2021 debut Skin, with smart, emotional, classy, beautiful soulful songs about heartbreak and other life struggles. The four-year gap, in part prompted by some health problems, has no doubt been a source of stress to the singer-songwriter, but her return is filled with glorious melodies and incisive lyrics maturely delivered with a mix of Philly soul, R&B, jazz and other influences including trip-hop, and that voice which still draws comparisons with that of Amy Winehouse. She heads straight into life’s struggles in the sparsely accompanied opener Brave with it’s snare drum and piano accompaniment and those divine vocal warbles. The spicy single Pass The Salt (with a burst of rap by Vince Staples) has a stop-start, don’t-you-bitch-on-me menace and a brilliant bassline and snappy drum roll. Carmen is a sparse, slow, smoky but smoothy cool number addressing the issues of unattainable beauty standards. Kano also makes a compelling cameo on slow, simmering, very depressed number Mathematics. Yet the most upbeat, arguably enjoyable and hooky are the fabulous retro soul of Somebody To You, the pacy drumbeat and trumpety panache of spy-thriller style I Know You’d Kill, while Perfect Crime is an optimistic whistle-along number with twist, and First Last Dance is a more lightweight, but fun piece of handclap Europop. But there’s oodles of blood-thick emotion running through this record. House With A Pool is a biting, melancholy number about abusive relationships. Mother drips with genuine family love and hurt. Every track oozes a power and it’s been worth the wait. Back with a bang, Joy Crookes is a true class act, and these songs will stand the test of time, no merely they draw on a musical styles with longevity, but because of her songwriting an vocal strengths. Out on Insanity Records / Sony / Speakerbox Recordings.
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