Album Review: Jessie Ware, Glasshouse

Jessie Ware's pared-down R&B has never quite set the charts alight - her deeply tasteful cadences seemingly too refined for the rough and tumble of the top 20. That is unlikely to change with her third album, which is in the same mannered tradition as its predecessors.

That despite the fact it was assembled in relatively fraught circumstances. Ware was in the middle of recording when she gave birth to a daughter, so that late nights at the studio were replaced by wee hour shifts at the side of her newborn. Sadly, little of that tumultuousness has seeped in. 'Stay Awake, Wait For Me' is background music for a upmarket clothes store; the Ed Sheeran-penned acoustic ballad 'Sam' is about as thrilling as you could expect of an Ed Sheeran-penned acoustic ballad. It's a shame she doesn't push herself because between the cracks are glimmerings of a more fraught and interesting artist. 'Midnight' has dreamy/nightmarish sense of dislocation and 'Selfish Love' is an urgent, Latin-flavoured lament.

A little more soul-baring and Ware could be a contender.

7/10
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