Album review: Estelle, All of Me

AS ANY lobbyist knows, the campaign for re-election begins the moment a party gains power. Things aren’t so different in record company boardrooms and there is a whiff of corporate strategising around Estelle’s new album that is never going to chime with her free-spirited musical style. Since she hit the big time on both sides of the Atlantic with her Kanye West-guesting single American Boy and accompanying album Shine, Estelle Swaray’s career trajectory has been the subject of careful maneouvering. The goal, naturally, is to build on that breakthrough success; the dream, presumably, to turn her into another genre-straddling pop queen like Rihanna, utilising those London roots and her rapping abilities to produce a chart-friendly blend of soul, funk, dancehall and hip-hop with a dash of club crossover potential. But this follow-up has been hanging around awaiting release since 2010. A couple of taster singles failed to catch fire commercially – not good news on the campaign trail, where the desired outcome is a big fat hit on which to hang an album release. Consequently, there is no particular sense of momentum – it’s just the next album by that girl who had the hit a few years ago. The safe option these days would be to go down the MOR soul route but there are quite enough of those guys out there in the wake of Adele’s supernova success, and Estelle has always been more fun than that. Nevertheless, there is a hollow ring to the check-me-out-in-the-VIP-lounge numbers with which she opens All Of Me. If you are going to kick off your album with the boast that “I am classic, I live at the MOMA”, you had better have the goods to back it up. The Life sets up a transatlantic exchange which ultimately peters out across the album but starts off hopefully enough. Estelle works the West London vowels and namechecks Tinie Tempah but, in keeping with the projection of the desired jetset image, also shouts out for Brooklyn, Miami and LA and delivers a slick US R&B chorus. International (Series) keeps up the aspirational theme, dropping in mentions of St Tropez, Johannesburg and Beijing for good measure. There is probably a good track to be made out of this interesting mix of dancehall, elastic soul singing and hip 21st-century beats, but this particular studio confection is a bit of a mess. The album settles down after this try-hard start, delivering its first pop chorus in the form of Love The Way We Used To, a lightly wrought love song tinged with a jazzy hue which plays to her husky tone, and adds a subtle taint of sadness. A couple of throwback 1980s soul funk tracks, Cold Crush and last year’s lead single Break My Heart, are nicely crafted and produced but lack the killer hook. Back To Love, another choice of single, sounds like a less euphoric, club-powered When Love Takes Over. So while there are likeable moments on All Of Me, there is no Moment. What there is is a series of intrusive skits in the form of recorded conversations about love, relationships, family and careers which only impinge briefly but whenever they come along I just want those guys to stop talking and let the music play. This device seems like an obvious hat-tipping to The Miseducation Of Lauryn Hill. Estelle appears to gravitate to the cool soul sounds of vocalists such as Hill, Jill Scott and Erykah Badu, but she doesn’t have the vocal heft of those artists. This is especially apparent on the pastoral soul track Thank You, which makes a slightly underpowered album centerpiece. And, despite writing most of her own lyrics, there is little sense of the self-revelation one might expect from an album called All Of Me. The insouciantly funky Speak Ya Mind at least accesses some of the sassy street attitude from her early career, as the album revs up a little in the closing stages. The va-va-voom presence of Estelle’s labelmate Janelle Monae on the final track Do My Thing is a mixed blessing, only highlighting the true individuality which Estelle has yet to hit on. “I do my thing like this because I can” rings truer coming from Monae, an artist who does not fit the mainstream mould but who has gradually made her mark, simply because her talent will out. Her creative journey has shown that if you have the vision and the material, there is far less need for campaign tactics, but Estelle has yet to exhibit that artistic mastery, which is why she is currently stuck between pop and a hard place. Estelle: All of Me Atlantic, £12.99 Rating: ***