Word: songs
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Dates: during 2010-2019
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Despite this, however, the production is the album’s most interesting element, creating rich arrangements that almost prevent the songs from becoming overly repetitive. The title track is the most impressive production feat: instruments cut in and out with a staccato aggression and Adu’s overdubbed voice hits multiple registers, weaving a tapestry of interlocking vocal snippets that drive the song’s dynamics from the arid determination of the opening to the rising chorus of wandering lovers. Distorted guitars and synthesizers howl like frigid winds through the track, slicing Adu’s distant...
...uniquely withdrawn yet powerful vocal style. Unfortunately, many of the songs are so mindlessly bland that it is easy to mistake her tasteful emoting for unfeeling coldness. “Morning Bird” is one of the few tracks which highlights and supports her unique vocals. The song traces a staggering piano figure down the sinewy and reserved melodic fragments that Adu shakes down with melancholic elegance. Here, her lack of obvious emoting benefits the song and her voice sounds more powerful than on most. The percussion is minimal—a tambourine shivering over the steady heartbeat...
...That Easy”— which ironically may be the best song on “Soldier of Love”—reveals the album’s deepest flaw. Despite an improvement in dynamic songwriting, the overly processed instruments and production which, in context of the stronger songwriting, is overbearing, keep the song from reaching the emotional peaks for which it aspires. A smoky upright bass pattern lightly supports the Sunday-afternoon strumming of the laconic acoustic and the waves of organ that sweep through the wide-open spaces of the song like wind...
While most of the album is immediately likeable, the few songs which do fall flat tumble headfirst. Track two, “Keep You Beautiful,” is a disappointing departure from the more audacious tracks. The weak drum beats and timid, painfully repetitive guitar loops invoke a stupor perhaps appropriate to some hazy, dim-lit lounge, but they fail to sustain the energy of the opener. “Keep You Beautiful” also lacks the diversity of the album’s better tracks; while a vibraphone and triangle rescue it from complete monotony, the song...
Despite such somewhat flawed experiments, “Falling Down A Mountain” contains many songs that will appease long-time fans. The notable “Harmony Around My Table” boasts toe-tapping drum beats and a sportive tambourine, providing solid accompaniment to jaunty piano reminiscent of Belle and Sebastian. Vibraphone and hand claps, as well as the background “doo-wops” and “la-la-las,” imbue the song with genuine charm. It doesn’t quite match the innovation of the more experimental tracks...