Somewhere in between
Jess Glynne Always In Between Warner
IN a recent interview with Star2, Jess Glynne described her sophomore album as “a bit more grown up”, and that it “steps on from the last record, so it’s not too different, but it has its own story”.
You can see where she is coming from. Musically, Always In Between doesn’t stray far from the radio-friendly formula of 2015 debut album I Cry When I Laugh, but Glynne’s vocal performance is much more controlled and mature here.
After a quick warm-up Intro track, actual album opener NoOne gets the album off to a strong start with a piano-driven riff that calls to mind Nina Simone’s Sinnerman, with Glynne flexing that powerhouse of a voice to great effect.
Smash hit I’ll Be There (which got Glynne the honour of being the first British female solo artiste to have seven No. 1 singles on the UK Top 40 Chart) is a strong follow-up, but it is the next track, Thursday, that really caught my attention.
Co-written by Glynne with Ed Sheeran and Steve Mac, Thursday is a soaring, inspiring number about self-acceptance and empowerment (“And there are many things that I could change so slightly, but why would I succumb to something so unlike me,” she sings) that is arguably the album’s best track.
After Thursday, however, the album descends into a continuous stream of unremarkable, generic pop numbers, from singles All I Am and 123 to Won’t Say No, with only power ballad Broken breaking the monotony of it all.
I was a little disappointed that Glynne didn’t try to push the envelope a little more on this album, instead sticking to a tried and true radio-friendly path that doesn’t quite showcase her most remarkable asset, her voice, as much as it should.
As it is, Always In Between isa decent pop record striving to be a great one, but ending up somewhere in between.– Michael Cheang
Twenty One Pilots Trench Warner
IT’S going to be hard for Twenty One Pilots to top the success of their last album. Every tune on Blurryface went gold, platinum or, in some cases, multiplatinum – the first album to do so in history. But if anyone’s going to do better, it’s these two guys from Ohio.
Trench, the 14-track, fifth album from vocalist Tyler Joseph and drummer Josh Dun, is every bit as good as Blurryface, continuing the band’s genre-bending trademark of tackling various styles and showcasing a knack for songwriting.
The band comes fast out of the gate with the throbbing bass line of Jumpsuit with insecurity in the lyrics. Then it’s on to Dun’s kinetic drumming on Levitate, a blissed-out and terrific Morph and The Killerslike, falsetto-fueled My Blood.
Further ahead, there’s the reggae-tinged Nico And The Niners ,the ‘80s-sounding The Hype and the complex, constantly shifting Bandito.
We reach peak Twenty One Pilots on Pet Cheetah, an exhilarating and daffy tune that namechecks Jason Statham as it mixes techno, rap and rock, along with a healthy dose of reggae and house. No one out there makes music as thrilling as this. Trench is a more low-key album – Cut My Lip and Neon Gravestones are slow burners – and Joseph and Dun show maturity in not overworking songs, too. The last track, Leave The City, is a piano-driven gem with understated drumming and ghostly vocals.
Trench also finds Joseph in a confident mood, lyric-wise, even mocking songwriting itself. “Chorus, verse, chorus, verse/ Now here comes the eight,” he sings on Levitate .On Smithereens, he croons: “For you, I’d go write a slick song just to show you the world.”
Well, he’s certainly done that. He’s made another album full of them. – Mark Kennedy/AP
Elvis Costello & The Imposters Look Now Concord Records
LIKE in Anna Karenina, the characters in Look Now, Elvis Costello’s sumptuous new album with The Imposters, are each unhappy in their own way.
A woman who laments her deteriorated marriage while doing some renovations around the house (Stripping Paper); a dilapidated music-hall singer whose return to showbiz may be brief (Under Lime); a daughter pondering her dad’s infidelity (Photographs Can Lie); someone grieving the end of the British empire (I Let the Sun Go Down) and so on.
What make it easy to be sympathetic with even the most pitiable of those in these very human songs are Costello’s elegant melodies and arrangements, which result in a kind of silkier, even more debonair version of Imperial Bedroom, his 1982 album produced by recently departed Beatles recording engineer Geoff Emerick.
Costello’s guitars are mostly in a supporting role. Horns, woodwinds and strings – as well as some of the liveliest backing vocals on an EC album since Afrodiziak lit up Punch The Clock – plus the deft hands of The Imposters and Argentine-born co-producer Sebastian Krys, turn Look Now into one of his most sonically gratifying records.
Burt Bacharach composed some of the music and Costello also dusted off Burnt Sugar Is So Bitter, another tale of domestic gloom, written years ago with Carole King.
But there are several others, including Why Won’t Heaven Help Me and Stripping Paper, which show how deeply those 1960s sounds, from pop to soul, influenced Costello and how expertly he applies them in his own superlative songwriting, which Look Now has plenty of.
Costello said he recorded the lead vocals as he was recovering from a cancer scare and it made him feel invigorated instead of depressed. The power of his voice here, including that characteristic long-wave vibrato, confirms his mood.
Those in Costello’s songs may be mostly miserable, but Look Now will make its listeners very happy indeed. – Pablo Gorondi/AP