On her third full-length release, Emeli Sandé aims to uplift. It’s packed with rousing, gospel-tinged choruses and lyrics about loving those around you, looking out for friends and finding the humanity in one another.
She often succeeds in her mission. Shine is infectiously optimistic, fuelled by sunny pianos and stomping beats, while Love to Help soothes with sultry sha-la-la backing vocals and softly strummed guitars. Extraordinary Being, a sleek funk groove, extols the virtues of self-belief: “It’s not your fault that you’re magic/ Baby, you’re pure fantastic.”
Sandé’s voice is impressively powerful, but that doesn’t stop it from sometimes getting buried beneath vast instrumentation. In quieter moments, her subtle vocal textures come to the fore and are particularly rewarding.
Real Life is far from adventurous in terms of its songwriting — too often, the structures seem slightly by-the-numbers. The tense, ascending strings towards the end of Honest are the closest we get to experimentation and are compelling enough to make you wish Sandé had taken similar risks elsewhere.
That said, by clinging on to her soul-inflected roots, Sandé manages to avoid any modern pop tropes, which at least gives the album a disarming authenticity.
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