BY DAVID BALLARD
In her sophomore effort, Grammy winner Adele delivers a modern yet timeless album, rich with soulful vocals and catchy melodies.
The album weaves enchanting ballads like “Someone Like You” with toe-tapping fast-paced songs like her first single, “Rolling in the Deep”. Though the pacing may differ, both types showcase her voice, using piano and percussion to support it rather than mask it. In “Set Fire to the Rain”, the merging of the instruments and her voice creates a song that becomes a unique element on the album, though still retaining enough aspects from the rest of the collection to not feel out of place.
At its core, the album is similar to her first effort, 19: a collection of emotional, love-centered, soulful ballads. This album includes a similar theme -the ending of a relationship- but it conveys it in a more mature, developed manner. ‘Turning Tables” is one such example, using the dramatic piano riff to support her equally stunning vocals. But Adele balances the album carefully. Following ‘Turning Tables’ is an acoustic driven singer/songwriter tune, “Don’t You Remember”, thus not overwhelming the audience with heavy songs one after another.
The brilliance of 21 is not the writing, though it is refreshingly honest, nor is it the melodies, though they are haunting. The brilliance is Adele herself. Her pure talent is rare in an age of auto-tuned pop and monotonous hip-hop, and 21 will surely put her in a class above those lacking such skills.