It’s really interesting to see how Amy Winehouse’s legacy continues to reverberate – and not just through endlessly repeated iconography or the tragedy-for-sale machine that’s built around her but musically too. Even rapper Little Simz namechecks and musically nods to her, and her unique update of Billie Holiday’s tone has been passed on to one degree or another to singers like Lola Young, Yazmin Lacey – and especially Celeste.
Not that Celeste is a copy of anyone by any means: her voice is very much her own with its own strengths and mannerisms, and her gothic cabaret-tinged style and presentation doubly so. On her second album her songs start where Winehouse in her most torch song, “Love is a Losing Game,” mode left off, and ramp up all the most high drama, Bond Theme, single stark spotlight on a dark stage, aspects to the absolute maximum. With the opening one-two punch of “On With the Show” and “Keep Smiling,” it pulls out every stop of swooping strings, sudden dynamic shifts, Celeste’s voice rising from near whisper just to the edge of cracking then falling back, and does it with gigantic panache.
However, perhaps you can see from just those titles, there’s a theme developing: it’s the Judy Garland, covering a broken heart with a brave face and a hollow laugh, darkness behind the razzle dazzle aesthetic through and through – and that continues for, well, the entire album. Any given song is great – and elements like the Philip Glass / Michael Nyman piano in “People Always Change” and “Sometimes”, the gorgeous intimacy of acoustic guitar and strings on “Time Will Tell” really lift them. But Celeste has range – as her Death In Vegas-sampling, alt rock smasher “Everyday” earlier this year proved dazzlingly – and as the closing Day of the Jackal theme (next best to Bond, right?) “Could it Be a Machine” goes into yet another crescendo, you might find yourself wondering if there couldn’t have been room for just a little bit more variation here.
Listen to "On With the Show":
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