Like most, I succumbed to the hypnotic vocals in her lead single “Heaven” and even if it did have more of a club feel than I normally go for, it still left me expecting Ms. Sandé to put out an LP that would easily flow into other genres and actually give me and others real reason to continue listening.
Instead, save for a scant two decent moments, what I have taking up space on my SD Card are fourteen tracks consisting of ballads or potential club anthems, all with the central and sadly unoriginal theme of love.
Love. The woeful lack of it, the exhaustive search for it, the almost indescribable feeling(s) one gets when it’s found, the exuberant profession of finally finding it to the world, etc. ad infinitum. Ad nauseum also.
While I’m certainly not “The Love Hater” those cynical statements may paint me to be, I do use them vehemently here to illustrate that what I expected, nay…yearned for was…simply more. More electronic/soulful production, more calculated risk taking, more of a chance to really make as much of an impact on the music world as some of her other UK predecessors have in the past and in recent years.
That is what I was looking for and I’m almost positive others will feel the same.
It would be hard not to after she turned in a freebie performance like
Easier In Bed
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A phenomenal track and one that “Our Version Of Events” is sadly, destitute of.
Even sadder still when a free non-album track has more drive and panache than the entire album. That’s a bad ratio on any side of the pond. If there were a few other songs in this vein on the record in lieu of the mass amounts of glossy, cottony pop love candy, to give the overall album more balance, I wouldn’t take such issue with what comes across as just plain lazy effort on the part of her production team to bring her better material to write to. We could have had another stellar voice quickly become more entrenched in the playlists and ears of potential listeners.
Instead, Emeli signs off on and then delivers a project that woefully finds it’s comfort zone by driving in the slow lane and never truly strays from there the entire journey, only swerving outside the painted double yellow lines once or twice to meander in the general direction of the nearest dance club. Twice and only twice on the disc does the production get any sort of vibe for the listener to get some sort of head nod.
On “Lifetime“, which finds Sandé sounding a tad scratchy over a bland loop of Little Feat’s “Fool Yourself“, she attempts to sing some sort of poignantly meaningful diatribe about life but by the time I had listened to the majority of the eleven tracks before it, I honestly can’t say I was paying attention anymore.
The only shining moment I could find on the album came sparsely packaged in
Where I Sleep
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Timing out at 02.11 and regrettably being the shortest track, the simplicity in its xylophone and drum melody perfectly accompanies Emeli’s tone, building upon itself near the end for her to go through a stunning set of octaves while telling a relationship story that sounds personal but still retains an essence of commonality that anyone of the other side of platonic love could relate to. The type of writing she’s done for this track is neither trite nor overly done but with it being the only one of it’s kind here, it still gravely struggles to hold up the all dead weight around it’s neck.
To her credit, Emeli’s voice is still a powerful force to be reckoned with, even when it’s singing over production that doesn’t suit me and with all of the writing credits she’s amassed for the likes of Susan Boyle and Leona Lewis, it’s evident that she isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.
Let’s hope that her sophomore release is a version of events that’s easier to listen to.
