19 – Adele

It’s been a pretty good time to be a British female artist these past couple of years. Lily Allen and Amy Winehouse’s success almost two years ago kicked down the door for a slew of artists like Duffy and Estelle, who offered a little more than the standard vapid pop and T&A combination offered by most American female pop artists. These girls had soulful influences and a bit of sass that ran contrary to the manufactured “bad girl/sexpot” images traded on by American artists like Britney Spears and Fergie.

The most popular import from the U.K. now is Adele. Barely out of her teens (the album title 19 refers to her age at the time the album was recorded and released last year), Adele was wildly successful in her native country.  An appearance on the Saturday Night Live episode featuring the real Sara Palin and a surprising 4 Grammy Award nominations — including Record of the Year and Best New Artist — have turned her into an artist to watch in America…and deservedly so.

Let’s see, how can we describe Adele’s music? How about this:   if Amy Winehouse and Feist had a baby and that baby had a baby with Fiona Apple, you’d wind up with Adele.   The sound is a little bit of jazz, a little bit of country/folk  and a lot of soul. Like Winehouse, her influences aren’t contemporary, but unlike Winehouse, Adele isn’t hip-hop identified. She seemingly draws a lot of inspiration from older Brit songstresses like Dusty Springfield as well as jazz singers like Billie Holiday.   The resulting sound is a musical stew that’s way more accomplished than someone this young should ever hope to be.

A good portion of 19 is spare, and a lot of people would say it’s underproduced.  That is a viable argument, but still a welcome change from whirry synths and processed vocals.   My favorites in this category include Best for Last, which shifts tempos from a semi-bluesy ballad to a stomper in the mode of K.T Tunstall’s Black Horse & the Cherry Tree (and back again). Hometown Glory is a stirring piano-and-strings ballad about (you guessed it) her hometown in England that would have been at home on any of Fiona Apple’s albums, and Adele offers a gentle, touching take on Bob Dylan’s (To) Make You Feel My Love, a song already ably covered by everyone from Billy Joel to Garth Brooks.

[amazon-product]B0018QOIXU[/amazon-product]While Adele is a capable balladeer, that’s certainly not all she does. The bouncy Cold Shoulder (masking it’s somewhat downcast lyrical content) has that sort of future-retro thing that Winehouse perfected. The song sounds vintage and contemporary at the same time. Right As Rain sounds like a lost Fifth Dimension song. You can picture Carlton on The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air dancing to a song like this. Of course, there’s also the hit single Chasing Pavements, a heartbroken love ballad with a sumptuous string-laden chorus. My version of 19 contains a live bonus disc that proves Adele is the real deal. No studio enhancements here.

Without one truly bad song, Adele’s 19 is easily one of this year’s best albums by a new artist.  She is an artist attaning commercial and critical favor by going against the grain of what is currently popular much like Sade did in the mid Eighties.  And like that legendary artist, Adele’s music won’t exactly cause you to run out and find your nearest dancefloor, but 19 is a well-written, well-performed listening experience, one you’ll keep coming back to the more you hear it.