30 Review

This is the album where she finally stopped being tidy. My Little Love is the proof: a mother's voice memo to a nine year old, then her own crying, left in the mix, over a soft soul track. It is uncomfortable and it is the bravest thing anyone at her commercial level has released in years. To Be Loved is a single vocal take that sounds like it cost her something.

Hold On earns its gospel swell. Inflo adds strings and Ludwig Goransson brings a jazz looseness, and the arrangements wander in ways the previous two albums never allowed. So the production is excellent and the writing is genuinely superb, and it is still an hour of a woman describing the worst period of her life in real time. Easy on Me is the only track anyone reaches for. Admired, discussed, and mostly left alone, which is the honest verdict on a record this heavy.