Album review: Celeste – Not Your Muse

This album is available in every format known to man excluding minidisc, i.e. CD, extended CD, vinyl, alternative tracks vinyl, coloured vinyl, cassette, streaming and various bundles of the above. You pays your money and takes your choice as some formats have as few as eight tracks and others have up to twenty one. I have the extended CD with 21 tracks.

Celeste was the BBC's ‘Sound of 2020’ choice and won a ‘Rising Star’ award at the Brits. Previous ‘Sound of’ winners include Singer/Songwriter Adele and professional mitherer Sam Smith.

What makes Celeste of additional interest to the jazz ‘community’ is the fact that she has been acclaimed as a new jazz voice and part of a new wave of women in jazz. This article in the Guardian  and this in the New York Times seem to see her at the forefront of a new movement rather than as part of a continuum. The articles would suggest that the likes of Zoe Rahman, Laura Jurd, Nubya Garcia, Yazz Ahmed among many, many others have been doing the dishes whilst the blokes were on stage, waiting for Celeste to come along and call them out of the kitchen.

She’s here now and the first question to ask is, does the work bear the weight of the hype or collapse beneath it?

Well, it’s not a jazz album, but it is a good album. It includes winsome ballads suggestive of Corinne Bailey Rae on her first couple of albums, some good pop songs and dancefloor fillers and on some her voice has a Billie-esque curl to it. I could imagine Nina Simone doing ‘Stop This Flame with its barrel-house piano and declamatory soul. Others are just high quality modern soul, and, as a reminder that the festive season is now less than ten months away, there is ‘A Little Love’, the song from last year’s John Lewis Christmas advert.

I was concerned that this might have been an album where everything was chucked at the wall and whatever didn’t immediately fall off was released. In fact, for a modern pop/soul album the quality is maintained across nearly 80 minutes.

I haven’t included the usual musicians’ credits as there are too many to list. Some songs are stripped down whilst others have string sections and full brass and reeds backing. Celeste Epiphany Waite, to give here her Sunday name, is co-writer on all tracks with one or two others and nothing looks to have been written by committee, which is a good thing as too many committee written pop songs tend towards the mediocre.  

If you only listen to jazz, you won’t want this album; if you’re tastes are wider you may.  When we can go back to the shops, you’ll find it filed under ‘Pop’ rather than under ‘Jazz’ or ‘Miscellaneous’.

The Jazz Police maybe keeping an eye on Celeste but any fines should be issued against over-excited journalists and not against the lady herself.

Dave Sayer

Released by Both Sides/Polydor.

Ideal Woman; Strange (Edit); Tonight Tonight; Stop This Flame; Tell Me Something I Don't Know; Not Your Muse; Beloved; Love is Back; A Kiss; The Promise; A Little Love;  Some Goodbyes Come With Hellos; Father's Son; Lately (feat. Gotts Street Park); Both Sides of the Moon (feat. Gotts Street Park); Strange; Unseen (feat. Lauren Auder); In the Summer of My Life; It's All Right; Hear My Voice; I'm Here.