PRINCE’S PROTEGEE HAS SOUL
Lianne adds power and purpose to her classic R&B with a set of perfect summer sounds
LIANNE LA HAVAS: Lianne La Havas (Warner)
Verdict: Powerful summer soul
BUSH: The Kingdom (BMG)
Verdict: Hard-rocking confessionals
RONAN KEATING: Twenty Twenty (Decca)
Verdict: Ballad-heavy hotchpotch
LIANNE LA HAVAS sought artistic inspiration from an unlikely source when she started making her third album last summer.
Hailed as a powerful new voice in British soul music when her debut, Is Your Love Big Enough?, came out in 2012, she had been refining her modern take on classic R&B ever since.
But it was her surprising cover of a Radiohead album track from 2007 that rekindled her creative urges.
On returning home to London from a triumphant Glastonbury appearance, she wanted to see whether she could nail her stage version of Weird Fishes/Arpeggi in the studio. she was so pleased with the outcome she decided to make an entire album the same way.
Lianne unearthed tender, soulful nuances in her bold cover while remaining faithful to Radiohead’s intricate percussion and delicate guitar — and a similar template works a treat on her own material here. Her self-titled third album is full of subtle, inventive songs perfect for warm summer nights.
We shouldn’t be too surprised at her resourcefulness. La Havas, 30, has never been a traditional soul girl.
she was mentored by Paloma Faith, worked with indie rockers Alt-J and collaborated with electronic composer Matt Hales, who co-produces here.
she’s also been championed by Prince. The Purple One played a gig in her tiny Leyton flat in 2014 and she recorded with him at Paisley Park in Minnesota.
But she’s never sounded as assured as she does here. Her singing has matured, and there’s a power and purpose to songs such as Bittersweet and Can’t Fight that wasn’t apparent on her two previous LPs.
HER band also play with a looseness that allows them to take sidesteps into folk-rock and jazz — and even add a touch of flute — without affecting the flow.
It’s a break-up album: its ten songs, which include Weird Fishes (with the Arpeggi bit dropped from its title), trace a relationship’s arc.
But, with Lianne admitting she can’t write when her emotions are raw, the romance is dissected with the benefit of hindsight. Her songs are understated rather than wounded or vengeful.
After setting the tone with Bittersweet — an overture underpinned by a classic Isaac Hayes sample — she examines the doomed relationship with an eye for everyday detail, and a lack of blame. On Read My Mind, she sings of a love so strong she ‘could make a baby tonight’.
Green Papaya, meanwhile, finds her hailing a lover who will inspire her to climb mountains.
But as we hit seven Times, its rhythms inspired by Brazilian guitarist Milton Nascimento, things are starting to fall apart. ‘You didn’t pay your rent, so I guess you’ll be leaving,’ she sighs.
There’s no self-pity, and the story ends with La Havas calmly concluding that she ‘deserved a better kind of love’. It’s a frank finale to one of the summer’s most novel releases: a sunny heartbreak record.
THE first Bush album in three years sticks to tried and trusted strengths. It’s a wholehearted affair, its guitars loud and messy and its drumming a meaty thud.
The London band were peers of Blur in the Britpop era, but their mix of grunge and alt-rock was always more popular in America, where 1996’s Razorblade suitcase topped the charts. Nothing on The Kingdom is likely to change that transatlantic imbalance, with Gavin Rossdale’s raspy voice supplemented by crunching chords. Nirvana and Pearl Jam remain obvious influences.
The songs themselves fall between the futuristic and the personal. In the former category, the title track outlines Rossdale’s vision of a utopian society.
On Blood River, a number that would sit easily on a Muse album, he ponders the dangers of robot technology: ‘When does the android become human?’
His personal songs are more palatable. Rossdale sang about the end of his 14-year marriage to Gwen stefani on 2017’s Black And White Rainbows, and he’s in confessional mode again here, addressing his inability to find lasting love on Quicksand — ‘I can’t seem to settle down, I can’t seem to stop this movie’ — before owning up to a midlife crisis on Crossroads.
THE guitar barrage is put on hold just twice. Undone is a powerful ballad, and the cinematic Bullet Holes was written for last year’s action thriller John Wick 3: Parabellum, which starred Keanu Reeves.
Rossdale has gone back to Bush basics here, although greater variety would have made this a more convincing return.
RONAN KEATING describes his latest album Twenty Twenty as ‘a greatest hits of new music’ — a pretty apt summary of a hodgepodge of new numbers and fresh interpretations of hits from his first solo album, Ronan.
His forte remains the sensitive ballad. He’s joined by shania Twain on country weepie Forever And Ever, Amen, a song which features Twain promising Ronan she’ll still love him, even when his hair falls out.
Duets with Nina Nesbitt and Robbie Williams are better, but the updates of his old hits — even with Alison Krauss guesting on When You say Nothing At All — are far from essential.