Celeste: Not Your Muse (Polydor)
Verdict: Rich and soulful
Weezer: OK Human (Atlantic)
Rating: 
Verdict: Homespun pop symphonies
Arlo Parks: Collapsed In Sunbeams (Transgressive)
Rating:
Verdict: Dazzling debut
This time last year Celeste Waite was on the brink of stardom. The singer from Saltdean, near Brighton, had just won the BRITs Rising Star award, and was getting ready to share a stage with Harry Styles and Rod Stewart at the music industry’s biggest bash
This time last year Celeste Waite was on the brink of stardom. The singer from Saltdean, near Brighton, had just won the BRITs Rising Star award, and was getting ready to share a stage with Harry Styles and Rod Stewart at the music industry’s biggest bash.
The Rising Star prize is the successor to the Critics’ Choice award that kick-started the careers of Adele and Florence + The Machine, and there was every reason to think Celeste would hurtle to the top in similar fashion. Tour dates were booked and a debut album scheduled.
Then, of course, the pandemic put her plans on hold. Celeste, who was born in California but moved to the UK at three, kept herself busy with a string of singles: Stop This Flame became a theme tune for football coverage on Sky Sports; A Little Love accompanied last year’s John Lewis and Waitrose Christmas advert.
Her rich, soulful voice also graced two Hollywood soundtracks. In the Disney+ movie Soul, she duetted with pianist Jon Batiste on a sublime cover of Curtis Mayfield’s It’s All Right. Even more impressively, she belted out the powerhouse ballad Hear My Voice over the end credits of The Trial Of The Chicago 7, prompting talk of Oscars recognition.
Now her debut album is finally here, and it reiterates all the promise shown by those soundtrack successes. Celeste, 26, discovered soul and jazz by listening to Aretha Franklin and Ella Fitzgerald in her grandad’s car, and she has mastered the art of mixing warmth with wide-eyed power.
Not Your Muse doesn’t grab the listener from the off. Ideal Woman is a languid statement of intent, all mellow vocals and soulful guitar arpeggios. But momentum gradually builds, with Stop This Flame powered by an insistent piano motif lifted from Nina Simone’s Sinnerman.
Celeste wrote most of these songs with British producer Jamie Hartman, once of pop band Ben’s Brother, but her single-minded lyrics suggest she’s unwilling to play second fiddle to anyone. On Ideal Woman, she refuses to be ‘the one who’s going to save you from all your discontent’. On Love Is Back, she admits to being bored with ‘troubled’ boys.
Singer Anais Marinho — aka Arlo Parks — has been talked up as a spokeswoman for her generation, but the descriptive songs that illuminate the 20-year-old’s debut are generally personal rather than universal
Barnstorming ballads are her forte. She pushes her voice on Beloved, singing as if the song was a big show tune. She should open her lungs more often, although the only misstep here is the recycled A Little Love. But, with the magnificent Hear My Voice a worthy bonus track, she’s ready to make up for lost time.
Weezer are another act whose plans for 2020 were thrown into disarray by Covid-19. The Los Angeles quartet, beacons of the alternative scene in the 1990s, had been working on a heavy rock album in tribute to Judas Priest, Iron Maiden and the other long-haired guitar heroes of singer Rivers Cuomo’s youth.
They even had a title — Van Weezer — that was a pun on Van Halen.
But when a proposed tour with Green Day and Fall Out Boy bit the dust, Cuomo spent his time in lockdown making a very different sort of record. Writing at home, at the piano, and then arranging masked sessions with his bandmates and a 38-piece orchestra (recorded remotely at Abbey Road), he came up with OK Human.
The title is another pun — this time on Radiohead’s OK Computer — although the music here sounds nothing like that of the Oxford quintet. It looks instead to Harry Nilsson, Randy Newman, The Carpenters and the symphonic introspection of The Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds. Reflecting its homespun nature, it’s also uncharacteristically personal. On the melancholy, Beatles-like opener All My Favorite Songs, Cuomo admits that the sounds that have been sustaining him through lockdown are invariably ‘slow and sad’.
He remains a consummate craftsman, saturating his songs with baroque melodies and swirling strings. Bird With A Broken Wing provides the big centrepiece, and Here Comes The Rain (‘It’s gonna wash all my troubles’) adds flickers of optimism. Ahead of the delayed Van Weezer, now due in May, it’s a timely pause for reflection.
Singer Anais Marinho — aka Arlo Parks — has been talked up as a spokeswoman for her generation, but the descriptive songs that illuminate the 20-year-old’s debut are generally personal rather than universal, rooted in a West London adolescence and themes of addiction, depression, sexual identity and unrequited love.
Parks developed an interest in poetry after a teacher at Latymer Upper School gave her a copy of Sylvia Plath’s Ariel, and she began making music by setting her own spoken-word rhymes to home-made beats.
There’s poetry on Collapsed In Sunbeams, too, but its best moments pair her vivid commentaries with her sweet singing voice and a backdrop of indie-pop and tender soul.
Highlights include Hurt, about a friend with an alcohol problem, and Caroline, an account of an ‘artsy couple’ fighting at a bus stop. Black Dog offers solace to a friend by name-checking the singer from The Cure: ‘You do your eyes like Robert Smith’. Greater musical variety would help, but this is a debut rich in promise.
Billie? The kid’s full of surprises
Billie Eilish continues to confound expectations with her lockdown singles.
Having switched to a jazzier approach on My Future before returning to familiar, stripped-down electronics on Therefore I Am, she’s now delivered her first Spanish number in Lo Vas A Olvidar, a duet with Catalan-born singer Rosalia (pictured).
Eilish first teased the collaboration — which is being used in American teen drama Euphoria — two years ago, and she dovetails well with a singer known for blending traditional flamenco with hip-shaking R&B. Produced by Billie’s brother Finneas, the dreamy ballad is an intriguing taster for Eilish’s second album.
Rag’n’Bone Man also pulls off a surprising hairpin turn with his new single All You Ever Wanted. Made in Nashville, pre-lockdown, it forsakes his customary blues and soul for pounding drums and choppy guitars reminiscent of Kings Of Leon. His new album, Life By Misadventure, follows on April 23.
And Mark Ronson protegee Raissa limbers up for her forthcoming Herogirl EP with the futuristic R&B of new single Shades On. The London-based vocalist sang with Ronson on last year’s excellent cover of Richard and Linda Thompson’s I Want To See The Bright Lights Tonight, and is a name to watch.
She’s now delivered her first Spanish number in Lo Vas A Olvidar, a duet with Catalan-born singer Rosalia (pictured)