Yahoo! Music Album Review

Released on 28/01/08
Label: XL

Brace yourselves for the second wave of young female attitude-emitters. Head of the pack is teenager Adele Adkins - a legend even before the release of her debut album, thanks to that BBC "Sound of 2008" poll. Adele went to the Brit School, talks fluent estuary and is friends with Mark Ronson. So utterly is she a product of her time she could be an illustration in a 25th century history book. Much to mistrust then. Until you hear the voice.

Smooth as Beyoncé, heartbroken as Janis Joplin, rich as Aretha - it is a beauty, let down only by some sloppy enunciation that would have earned her a considerable telling-off from Motown boss Berry Gordy (eg "fort" for "for what?", a pretty crucial lyric in context and therefore an unacceptable mangling). But the thing with good voices, like good steaks, is they're often nicest served straight up. Adele clearly knows this and left to her own devices would, you suspect, cook everything plain.

But those boy producers - Ronson included - will keep coming in and messing things up with their orchestral gravy and compotes of beats. Fortunately, the same thing happened to The Old Adele (ie Amy Winehouse) on her first album, and it didn't hamper her ascent. Example: breakout single "Chasing Pavements" is ruined by producer Eg White's cheesy Las Vegas strings which swamp the chorus like cold, smelly floodwater.

This track also grates lyrically with its teeth-gnashing ungrammatical and wonky central image of "...chasing pavements / Even if it leads nowhere", where sense is jettisoned for the sake of scansion. Elsewhere, Ronson tries desperately to pin some fine gentleman's tailoring onto "Cold Shoulder", ushering in rhythmic and percussive ideas from Massive Attack's "Unfinished Sympathy", some girl-groupy multi-tracking, and ending up with something pleasantly Nancy Sinatra-ish yet, well, unnecessary - you do wish he'd back off and let his client's formidable larynx and lungs do their job unhindered.

As is to be expected given Adele's tender years, thematically things are a bit monochrome. Every single song is about a boy who hasn't quite decided whether to be her boyfriend or not. Hence oceans of "What am I supposed to do to make you want me?"; scads of "Do tell me why you waste our time / When your heart isn't in it"; and acres of "I'm tired of trying / Your teasing ain't enough" ("Tired"). All this, however, is forgiven with a listen to the highlights, such as the sweet acoustic guitar-led "Daydreamer".

Best of all, however, is the superlative "Hometown Glory". Slowly swelling around a repeated simple piano motif, it's a paean to public pride, imbued with private melancholia. A song Knebworth-era Oasis would have given their left trainer for. A sober, literate sister to Lily Allen's "LDN", and a defiant anthem for a beleaguered London which, had it been broadcast from the rooftops immediately after 7/7, could have brought Al Qaeda to its knees all by itself. For this astonishingly mature and moving creation alone she deserves our time.

    by Anna Britten