SHAZNAY LEWIS

PAGES

Six years after All Saints’ most recent album and fully 20 years after Open was her only previous solo LP, Shaznay Lewis finally unveils more of her songwriting, resulting in 12 further reminders of her varied skills within most forms of pop.

While Open had a stellar backroom cast including Rick Nowels, Basement Jaxx and Bacon & Quarmby helping out, here Florence + The Machine co-writer Ant Whiting is the most instantly familiar name.

Lewis is undeniably the big talent this time around.

The summery mood of Got To Let Go is the closest to Lewis’ day job and would doubtless have reached No.1 if it had been the follow-up to Pure Shores. Lyrically, it’s more similar to the rest of the album. Empowerment is ultimately the theme – more so than on Open, which arrived soon after All Saints’ troubled first split, Lewis sounds confident, relaxed and ready to share lessons from a quarter of a century of the pop life.

That confidence extends to Pages’ eclecticism, with the breakbeats of General Levy/ Shola Ama collaboration Good Mourning followed by Supposed To Be’s finger-clicking minimalist bounce, where Lewis reminds us she’s too good a singer to feel the need to showboat her range. Instead, as with the break-up disco of Tears To The Floor, Lewis lets the power of the song take her voice where it needs to.

The only problem is that Lewis appears so relaxed that she occasionally seems in a comfort zone. As powerful as Bruises and Peaches are lyrically, the music is anonymous pop/soul and power ballad respectively, unable to live up to the sentiment. They resemble demos Lewis has written for another artist to take on.

Mostly, Lewis appears to be thriving just fine on her own. The stunning Hearts In Danger is a mighty vintage disco stormer to end Shaznay’s solo return. “Going out of control!” she roars. No chance of that. It’s taken long enough, but Pages shows that Shaznay Lewis’ music is right where it should be. JE