Incredibly, it is five years since Amy Winehouse and her beehive slow-danced into the public consciousness via Back to Black. Sultry and perfumed but with venom in its veins, the album has proved more influential than anyone back then could possibly have imagined. With Winehouse herself on the high road to oblivion, a deluge of soundalikes, wannabes and proteges rushed to occupy the void. Most have enjoyed all the long-term success of a fifth placer in X-Factor. Duffy’s second album blues seemed to have metastasized into terminal decline; Rox’s spell in the limelight was over before it even started. If you know the whereabouts of Paloma Faith’s career, her record company would be delighted if you could get in touch.
Of all the post-Winehouse generation, baby-faced south Londoner Adele seemed the least likely to outlive the brief blitz of UK media hype that accompanied the release three years ago of her debut album, 19. Granted, she appeared the most naturally talented of the pretenders, with a smokey voice attesting to a wisdom beyond her tender age (she was still a teenager at the time). Still, the record itself made for lean pickings – the single ‘Chasing Pavements’, aside, what we had here, it appeared, was simply another sweet but largely personality-free emoter who hadn’t quite worked out what she wanted to say to the world (if anything).
Six months on, everything changed. ‘Chasing Pavements’ became a hit in the United States. In the process, Adele was elevated from regional novelty to a rare UK singer who had equalled Winehouse’s achievement of registering with the American public (for her troubles, she bagged a Grammy). Quite obviously this brush with international stardom has agreed with her: now all of 21, she returns with an album inspired by a romantic break-up but cheerfully lacking in self-pity or flailing bitterness. Instead, this is Adele 2.0 – brassy, confident and, in a wrenching departure from her torchy chanteuse billing, prepared to rip it up and rock it out when required too.
That much is clear from the opener ‘Rolling In the Deep’, a lover revenge saga wherein she shrieks and ululates over a barrage of garage band guitars, roiling pianos and tonking drums. In the past Adele has sounded like a decent singer looking for something meaningful to share with her public. Here, she takes on the part of the woman wronged with ball-shriveling bite.
Part recorded in Dublin with Johnny Cash/Red Hot Chili Peppers producer Rick Rubin, 21 plunges deeper down the rabbit hole on ‘Rumour Has It’, a siren song with rusty edges that lulls you into a dinner party stupor and then bares its fangs. Granted, she slips back into supper-club crooner stereotype with the mid-tempo ‘Turning Tables’ and ‘Don’t You Remember’. However, there’s a steeliness to the writing that (just about) holds cliches at bay. Indeed, if there’s a misstep she saves it right to the end with a soul-curdling reading of The Cure’s ‘Love Song’. Sapping all of the vitality from the original, it is in the tradition of terrible Cure interpretations by people who don’t grasp what made the material worth cherishing in the first place. After all the good work that went before, it’s a letdown and we feel obliged to deduct half a star on behalf of Robert Smith, who, wherever he is, should be outraged by this jazz-lounge bitch-slap of a cover.