#481 Adele - 21

Every once in a while someone gets so big I break down and listen to their stuff, even if I'm pretty sure I won't like it. Sometimes it pays off!

Man, inflected, yowly female vocals are really in. It's not a sound that I have a lot of patience for, so from the first warbled notes I was skeptical. But I gotta admit, that first track gets cracking, full of insistent drums, surging choruses, and Adele does soar by the end, leading into a riotous, cavernous stomp. Even the following track, as one-dimensional as it is, is downright irresistible.

Throughout Adele belts out power-girl style, channeling Alanis's seethe and Fiona's spooky menace at turns (I'm told Amy Winehouse is the point of comparison of choice, but I can't say I've heard much of her stuff). In some cases, like on those first two tracks, it works, and I was getting downright excited during listen #1.

But then Turning Tables establishes the blueprint followed by more or less every other song on the album: the flat, looping meanderer, where Adele's insistent repeating of the chorus is expected to carry increasing heft just in the repeating. Again and again, especially heading into the albums overlong ending trio, I thought to myself "is this the same song still going?", each song going on one chorus longer than it needed to, expecting more emotional buy-in than it seemed to have earned.

I mean, it's perfectly good pop. As pop, its really good pop. The production is flawless, each instrument standing in its own sonic space, none of this modern everynote reverbey pileupons. This is crisp, assured music that isn't hiding from itself, and on some level I admire that. But the songs themselves hope to be carried on the back of Adele's delivery of these very heartfelt lyrics, and to me, that's not gonna get me there. Too post post jaded, I demand constant novelty, infinte invention, songs marionetting marrionettes with marrionettes, a million moving parts and a clockwork impossibility. Repeated sentimental sentiment only gets you as far as 2.5/5

You might like this if: you want to hear a woman with a powerful, inflected voice sing some very well-produced, perfectly good, ultimately mostly unadventurous songs