Pre-Order album sounds like, based on your knowledge of her previous work. Finished? Congratulations! You’re absolutely right.
After an uncomfortable excursion into happier dance music with
Collide – her notably absent single from 2011– Leona is here to restate
her core principles. Namely that a) she is always unlucky in love,
unless she is swooning in melancholy bliss; b) she is always sad about
how things have turned out, even if she is swooning in melancholy bliss;
and c) her melancholy bliss is the size of a mountain. A really big
one, with a very sharp peak.
And of course, this creates a problem for anyone hoping to take her
career in new directions. Over the course of these 12 songs there are
all sorts of production nods to happier music: the dubstep drop
(Glassheart), the ticky breakbeats (Come Alive), the thick shag pile
bass on the up-tempo numbers (note: there are no up-tempo numbers, there
are only the not-ballads). But sitting on top, as always, is the
eternally downcast Leona, the sensitive flower with the elephant bellow.
Even on Fireflies, the only chipper-ish moment in the whole
collection, she sounds devastated – by beauty, in this case. That’s her
natural tone of voice.
So of course the songs that tend to fly best, on their own terms at
least, are the uncluttered muscle ballads: When It Hurts, Fingerprint,
Un Love Me. How very expectable.
But then there’s Trouble. It’s the sole song that suggests Leona is
an active participant in her own misery, the only song that takes her
mournful wail and puts it somewhere new – in this case, a stern lesson
in the power politics of a love gone bad, resting on a pillowy base of Massive Attack strings. Taken straight, or with a bitter twist of Childish Gambino, it’s a powerful draft.BBC
Four or five more songs like that from contributing writer Emeli Sandé, maybe a collaboration with Jessie Ware, and this would feel like a fresh start. As it is, it’s simply the next Leona Lewis album.
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