Adele is back, in case anyone has failed to notice. After a three-year absence, the BRIT school graduate sang a tentative “Hello, it’s me” on her comeback single and clocked up a million digital sales and a billion video hits in a week. Her previous album, 21, sold over 30 million copies, the only release this century to scale such dizzy heights. The ailing music industry is desperate for her to pull off the same trick again. The rest of us are just hoping for another great album full of heartfelt songs delivered with a warm, powerful voice that makes us want to sing along, punch the air and shed a tear.
The first thing to say is I don’t think anyone will be disappointed. Covering much of the same kind of musical and emotional terrain, 25 is certainly the equal of its predecessor. What it sacrifices in youthful rawness it makes up in maturity and sheer class. Adele Adkins has taken her time over her third album and it shows.A lot is said about Adele’s fantastic singing but the key to her global success is surely that she gives herself material worth wrapping her chops around. 25 is crammed top to bottom with perfectly formed songs – elegantly flowing melodies, direct and truthful lyrics and richly textured production – all sung as if her life depends on it.There are deep, resonant piano ballads (Remedy, Love In The Dark and All I Ask), a brace of slinky, playful pop belters (Send My Love (To Your New Lover) and Sweetest Devotion) and some spooky, thunderous, big production dramas (I Miss You, Water Under The Bridge).The highlight has to be River Lea, a blast of North London gospel that improbable locates the source of Adele’s musical soul in the waters of Chingford, Walthamstow and Tottenham. “When I was a child I grew up by the River Lea / There was something in the water and now that something’s in me.”
Now 27, and a mother of one in a settled relationship, the album looks back a couple of years to a more transitional phase (hence the title). It is a collection of torch songs, filled with longing for lost love and mourning her own faded innocence, filtered through more emotional distance than the raw, hurting ballads and blues of 21.She has worked with some of contemporary pop’s leading writer-producers, including Paul Epworth, Greg Kurstin and Max Martin. These are names that turn up everywhere in the charts, so the album’s very organic, old-fashioned flavour comes from Adele herself. Musically, she stands squarely in the middle of the road, and it is only her earthy personality and soulful honesty that lends her any kind of cutting edge. For a contemporary pop star, she never ventures much further forward in musical eras than the Eighties. You can detect nods to Lionel Richie, Phil Collins, Carole King, Burt Bacharach and even the chanson of Charles Aznavour, with a hint of Enya’s Orinoco Flow in the rhythm and melody of Sweetest Devotion. But it would be churlish to carp when pop doesn’t come much more perfect than this.
The beauty of Adele’s singing is how effortless it is. The depth of her notes is luxurious with the slightest of croaks in her upper range lending a twist of soul. She gives herself space, words falling neatly with music and rhythm, albeit she has the advantage of being able to stretch vowels and add syllables apparently at will. “It’s so co-oo-oo- old out here-ee-eer in your weel-de-er-ne-ess” looks ridiculous in print but sounds like the truth when Adele puts her heart into it. There’s real joy in her vocal, even when she is grappling with private pain. She loves to sing, and the world loves to hear her.
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