Been there, done this: Adele doesn’t shake it up on ‘25’
“This is never ending, we’ve been here before,” Adele sings on “Love in the Dark,” the most traditional-sounding track on her new, tradition-bound album, “25” (Columbia).
After selling 30 million albums worldwide, as Adele did the last time out with “21,” there isn’t a great deal of incentive to shake things up. So Adele does what Adele does best on what is being billed by some hype-stirrers as the year’s (the century’s?) most anticipated album.
Adele Adkins, the 27year-old British singer with the awe-inspiring voice and the charming, girl-next-door personality, opens her first album in four years with “Hello,” a tear-stained ballad that could’ve been lifted off “21.” Did I mention tears? A facial-tissue company has jumped in to offer at least one critic a free box of its product to stem crying jags that will inevitably ensue while listening to the Adele album: “The act of giving a (tissue) … to someone who needs one — whether it’s a stranger, someone we care about, or even ourselves — can equalize, connect and uplift us all.”
The facial-tissue company’s mission might apply to Adele’s record company, as well. She’s here to equalize, connect and uplift, because who doesn’t need a good cry once in a while?
This is not to diminish Adele’s skills, her poise and precision as a multi-octave vocalist. But there’s a sense of “we’ve been here before” on “25.” Her new songs look back on the wreckage of that relationship and seek some sort of closure, if not healing. Adele, who shares a cowriting credit on each of the 11 songs, isn’t much for flowery syntax or literary allusions. Her directness is a huge part of her appeal, her emotional and lyrical transparency inviting everyone into her world. She sprinkles just enough specifics amid the cliches to identify the songs as her story, rather than a cutand-paste factory job assembled by a committee of songwriters.
But the music itself sticks to a formula centered on piano ballads and churchy hymns. “Hello” is stately and slow-moving — producer Greg Kurstin is new to the team, but he brings nothing new to the sound. The piano-playing singer-songwriter Tobias Jesso offers more of the same on “When We Were Young.” “Water Under the Bridge” manages a bit of a gallop but falls back on echoes that are vaguely gospel, and vaguely mush, despite the annoying cannon-shot reverb on the snare drum. Danger Mouse dials up more gospel organ but little else on the inert “River Lea.”
The most lavishly orchestrated track, “Love in the Dark,” swims in more bombast than Adele needs. Her measured vocals avoid histrionics even as the music tries to bust the seams of her natural restraint, but barely. She’s better served by Bruno Mars’ “All I Ask,” which tries to put her on Broadway shoulder-to-shoulder with Barbra Streisand or Barbara Cook, singers capable of turning even the gooiest dreck into roofraisers.
With even slightly more adventurous arrangements, Adele hints at what this album might have been. Swedish pop maestro Max Martin worked with Taylor Swift on “1989,” the only album in recent years with sales figures within shouting distance of Adele’s, and he collaborates with the singer on the relatively brisk “Send My Love (to Your New Lover),” centered on Adele’s percussive guitar and a playful chorus. This is Adele moving into Swiftian territory, but she’s versatile enough to make it seem like a natural sidestep.
“I Miss You” evokes the ghostly atmospherics of Phil Collins’ “In the Air Tonight,” with producer Paul Epworth’s drums upfront, suiting a song populated with ghosts. With its undulating, fingerpicked acoustic guitar and dusky vocal, the Kurstinproduced “Million Years Ago” suggests Brazilian bossa nova, French art song or the autumnal balladry of ’50s Frank Sinatra.
What-might-have-beens saturate Adele’s lyrics through the first 10 songs. It’s only on the final song, “Sweetest Devotion,” that she sounds uncharacteristically optimistic and ready to move on as she celebrates a new relationship. Meanwhile, she’s left her huge fan base with a largely critic-proof album designed to keep her career where “21” left it.
Greg Kot is a Tribune Newspapers critic.