CDs of the week: Jay Sean, Westlife and R Kelly

27.11.09

 Add your view

JAY SEAN
All or Nothing
(Jayded/Cash Money)
***
Not one to be easily daunted, Hounslow's Jay Sean has overcome several career false starts to become, apparently, the most successful British urban act in United States chart history. And while the 28-year-old is hardly unknown here, like Floetry, Bush and Foghat, he's been embraced by the Americans as one of their own, hence his move to New York.

This third album — naughtily padded out with a fistful of tracks from his second, which suggests the former medical student's fabled work ethic may not be all it seems — reveals both his strengths and his weaknesses. His voice is warm, appealing and so bereft of ethnicity that there's surely no market he can't conquer (he's particularly big in Romania) and he can knock off a pleasing tune in his sleep, although on the dreary Stay (it perks up when it appears for the second time with Chipmunk guesting) it sounds like he actually has.

The Lil Wayne duet, Down, trundles along merrily; Craig David's cameo on Stuck In The Middle is a treat, White Light is a Justin Timberlake-ish big ballad and Sean Paul brings sorely needed edge to the highlight, Do You Remember?

For all his gifts, the privately educated former Kamaljit Singh Jhooti is undermined by a tendency to take the bland option, as if in mortal fear of alienating anyone. A little more pleasing himself and a little less pleasing others would have made all the difference — but for now he's doing just fine.
JOHN AIZLEWOOD

POP
Jesca Hoop
Hunting My Dress
(Last Laugh)
****
The woodwork squeaks and out crawls another Kate Bush-esque female singer/songwriter who dares to look beyond the confines of the pop-chick box.

Jesca has one of those voices that whispers sweet nothings one moment and provokes dire imaginings the next. Similarly, her music shifts swiftly from tender to tough. Angel Mom, for one example, the title track for another. The best of Ms Hoop is to be found on songs such as Murder of Birds, with its extraordinary vocal mimicry of feathered excitement, and Tulip, which is one of those dark tales of murder and keening remorse much beloved of the folk tradition. It's all here — and Tom Waits likes it too.
PETE CLARK

Westlife
Where We Are
(Sony)
**
Bewildering as it may seem, Westlife are the biggest-selling band in the UK this decade. To listen to the hollow, identikit ballads on their seventh album is to despair at how music that is so bland has appealed to so many.

Chief crooners Shane Filan and Mark Freehily can still hit the high notes on lead single What About Now? while the other two nameless beefcakes wade in with some impressive hyperventilating on the Spandau Ballet-inspired How to Break a Heart.

Nevertheless, this is the uninspiring sound of a band taking no chances: Where We Are finds Westlife exactly where they were at the beginning of the decade.
RICK PEARSON

Kelly
Untitled
(RCA)
**
On his first album since being found not guilty of producing child pornography, 42-year-old R&B veteran R Kelly still thinks the world wants to hear him singing about sex.

On Echo, he's planning “sex in the morning, sex all day”, while Pregnant attempts the route one chat-up line: “Girl, you make me wanna get you pregnant.” By the time he announces “Open up your legs, girl, I wanna kiss you in your private spot,” we've got our eyes scrunched and our fingers in our ears. The innovative production of Crazy Night and complex time signatures of Exit suggest other skills, but overall this one-track mind makes for a singularly dull album.
DAVID SMYTH

JAZZ
aul Booth
Pathways
(Pathway)
****
Canadian star Ingrid Jensen, arguably the best female trumpeter in jazz, guests on this admirable album by one of Britain's busiest freelance tenormen. Michael Brecker and John Coltrane are inevitable influences but there's far more to Paul Booth than mere speed and fluency — witness his rather thoughtful ballads, Just by Chance and Calm Now, and feelingful version of Embraceable You. It's high time Booth enjoyed the spotlight instead of making other people's albums sound good. It's
also good to hear Phil Robson's guitar in more straightahead jazz settings than with his Partisans group.
JACK MASSARIK

WORLD
Márta Sebestyén
I Can See the Gates of Heaven
(World Village)
****
Márta Sebestyén is the voice of traditional Hungarian folk — pure, powerful and seductive. Best known internationally for her soundtrack vocals on The English Patient, she's recorded with most of Hungary's seminal folk bands. Here she's working in a reduced but fresh idiom with two magnificent musicians — Mátyás Bolya on plucked strings and Balázs Szokolay Dongó on shepherd's flutes, bagpipes and other wind instruments. Sebestyén sings hand-picked songs that she has learnt from traditional singers. These are beautiful pieces but if there was more traditional folk, a few rough edges and a little less artistry, it would be sensational.
SIMON BROUGHTON

What's on today   What's on tomorrow

Receive our newsletter