Playlouder - Music is the Network

Come the end of the year it’s become increasingly more common for music writers to be polled on the stars they think will light up the sky in the following annum, and it’s becoming increasingly predictable with each calendar year what they’ll say. Mika was the dead cert for 2007, which wasn’t unfounded, and the top tip for 2008 is almost unanimously Adele. And who can blame them? You see the world already needs a new Amy Winehouse, given that the other one is supposedly washed up and, if you believe what you read, is readying herself for a meeting with her maker. Adele on the other hand, is a hardworking down to earth nineteen-year-old from Hackney, who just happens to have been gifted with a rich, powerful set of pipes. And she’s not likely to start smoking crack until she’s at least 22.

The Amy comparisons are a little wide of the mark, however. And while record companies clamor for the new Winehouse, XL don’t really do things that way, which is a relief. Otherwise they would have brought Mark Ronson in and probably whacked a fucking beehive on her head. As it is, the songs on ‘19’ are sensitively treated and arranged, even if about half of them fail to make much of an impression.

The opening tracks, ‘Daydream’ and ‘Best For Last’ set out her stall, but while attempting to be dreamy and lilting, actually fall into dreary quite quickly, and a song like ‘Crazy For You’ – no, not the Madonna one - is no doubt meant to imbue you with the same sort of feelings, as say, Gershwin’s ‘Summertime’, though listening to it you can’t help but wish autumn would hurry up and get here.

Saying that, there are about five stand out tracks that could all be singles. One of them of course already is – the divine ‘Chasing Pavements’ which sounds so delightfully incongruous on what passes for daytime radio these days. ‘Melt My Heart To Stone’, ‘Right as Rain’ and ‘Make You Feel My Love’ are all dynamic, dramatic, with a hint of tragic enough to be mentioned in the same breath as her idols Etta James and Billie Holliday. She’s a long way to go though. While Adele has a lovely, expressive voice most of the time, there’s still work to do, and being nineteen years old, that work is eminently achievable. Her vox is smoky and lush maybe, and her range incredible, but there’s still a lack of variation and sometimes emotion. That’ll come. The new Amy Winehouse? I don’t think so. The new Joss Stone, maybe.