EMELI’S BACK WITH A SLICE OF REAL LIFE
EMELI SANDÉ: Real Life (Virgin EMI) Verdict: Solid return — with a gospel twist ★★★✩✩
SAM FENDER: Hypersonic Missiles (Polydor) Verdict: Flying to the top ★★★★✩
THE success of her debut album, Our Version Of Events, was daunting for Emeli Sandé. She had won the prestigious Critics’ Choice Award and, like Adele and Ellie Goulding before her, used it as a springboard to stardom.
A mix of rhythmic pop and heart-wrenching ballads made Our Version Of Events the best-selling album of 2012.
Its maker topped the singles chart three times and sang for a TV audience of 900 million at the London Olympics — not bad for a former medical student from rural Aberdeenshire who originally saw herself as a songwriter working behind the scenes rather than a star in her own right.
The unforeseen fame inevitably took its toll. Reeling from the breakdown of her marriage to marine biologist Adam Gouraguine, Emeli admits she ‘wasn’t grounded’ when she released her patchy second album Long Live The Angels three years ago, and she has maintained a low profile since.
The Scot returns today with a record designed to claw back lost ground while edging tentatively forward.
Real Life is being billed as a fresh start, but it is largely business as usual, with big ballads to the fore. Sandé still sings them with power and verve, but there are some familiar shortcomings in some hackneyed lyrics and overwrought arrangements.
She begins as if she has never been away. Human, with its Seventies soul strings and reggae bass, wouldn’t have sounded out of place on her first album. Love To Help is all shuffling soul beats, acoustic guitars and subtle trumpet.
Sparrow, though, is one of several ballads let down by fussy arrangements and lyrical platitudes: Emeli is taking ‘the long way home’; fortunately she has the ‘ wind beneath my wings’. Things get more interesting when she joins forces with the London Community Gospel Choir. Sandé has never been one of pop’s showgirls, but the inspirational vocal backing sparks a livelier approach on You Are Not Alone and Shine, the latter lifted further by some vibrant piano.
ANOTHER number, Honest, sounds like something from a stage musical, an area that might ultimately suit her theatrical lyrical style. She has expressed an interest in contributing to Disney’s forthcoming remake of The Little Mermaid, and she wrote the upbeat disco number Extraordinary Being for this summer’s superhero film Dark Phoenix. The track is one of the high points, moving Sandé out of her comfort zone.
Real Life takes care of business on its hushed ballads, but it’s when Emeli takes a chance that she shines.
SAM FENDER is another whose career was boosted by a Critics’ Choice Award. But the gritty rocker, who beat Lewis Capaldi and Mahalia to this year’s prize, paid his dues the traditional way. He was working in a Newcastle call centre when his manager spotted him playing in a local pub.
His debut album, made in his own warehouse studio, confirms his talent. Fender, 25, writes vivid songs about everyday experiences and sets them to a sophisticated mix of guitarfuelled rock and electronic pop. The lyrics are sometimes clunky,
but the tone is sensitive, not sanctimonious: ‘I’ve no answers, only questions,’ he sings. He’s at his best on the title track, all jangling guitars and a rasping sax solo straight from the Bruce Springsteen-Clarence Clemons songbook. The Borders, a kitchen- sink drama about single parenthood, is driven by a mix of modern Americana and Eighties electronics that echoes U.S. band The War On Drugs. Fender tackles tough topics — mental health on Dead Boys; the downside to smalltown life on Leave Fast — but his seriousness is balanced with euphoria on That Sound, a celebration of how music stopped him going off the rails. ‘It’s the only thing that keeps me grounded grounded,’ ’ he sings sings. He’s now heading for the stars.
BOTH albums are out today. Emeli’s tour starts on November 15 at the Regent Theatre, Stoke-on-Trent ( ticketmaster.co.uk). Sam’s tour kicks off at Manchester Academy on November 22 ( samfender.com).