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Rating: Excellent |
Adele's 2009 debut album, 19, was a Grammy-winning hit that revealed the British singer/songwriter's talent for bittersweet soul and folk-inflected love songs reminiscent of an infectious mix of Dusty Springfield and Terry Callier. The album earned her a legion of fans, and there was a lot of anticipation for the inevitable follow-up.
In many ways, her sophomore album, the similarly age-appropriate 21 , is a continuation of the sounds and themes Adele pioneered at 19. She’s still the bluesy pop diva with a singer/songwriter’s soul and a seemingly bottomless capacity for heartbreak. If the album’s tastefully organic production and bevy of celebrity co-writers are a little too on-the-nose to satisfy fans’ expectations, the best it does is showcase Adele’s titanic vocal capabilities, which are—more than a few times on 21 —downright unnerving.
Last time around, we got the breezy, Callier-esque folk-soul ballad “Daydreamer” to slowly draw us into the album; here, Adele immediately injects us with the driving gospel fever-blues anthem “Rolling in the Deep.” While the song certainly owes a debt to the punk-blues of Beth Ditto and the Gossip, it’s also ridiculously sexy and one of the best singles of any decade — and, unfortunately, it sets the bar far too high for everything else on 21.
Which isn't to say 21 is bad; on the contrary, songs like the similarly blues-inflected Ryan Tedder co-write “Rumour Has It” and the old-school soul cut “He Won't Go” are wonderfully catchy, booty-shaking numbers, and exactly the kind of songs you want and expect from Adele.
That said, if Adele’s vocals go on forever here, so apparently does her hunger for bad-relationship mojo. An inordinate amount of material on 21 deals with longing for lost love. The album’s centerpiece, the mega-ballad “Take It All” — co-written by her “Chasing Pavements” partner Francis White — opens with Adele belting out, “Didn’t I give it all?” Delivered starkly at first over a simple piano accompaniment, then later backed by a gospel choir, it’s an instant classic in the tradition of “The Rose,” “And I Am Telling You I Am Not Going” and “All by Myself” that, over the years, could be regarded as a milestone in the singer’s career and a cathartic moment for fans who identify with their idol’s Pyrrhic love persona. For others, that persona and the intrusiveness of song after song of heartbreak over the course of the album could be a little alienating. Ultimately, though, Adele gives us her all on 21, and for now, that's enough.
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