Sol-Angel and the Hadley St. Dreams Review

The improvement over the debut is enormous and the record still has not quite arrived. Working with Raphael Saadiq, Mark Ronson and Cee Lo Green, she builds a set of songs on live drums, tambourine and organ, and the vintage soul framing suits her thin, conversational voice far better than radio production did. I Decided is the best thing on it, a genuine stomper that would have been a hit for anyone in 1966.

Sandcastle Disco is delightful. T.O.N.Y. is funny and specific about a man who is only good for one thing. Cosmic Journey drifts somewhere stranger and points at where she was heading. The problem is that the pastiche is close enough to its models to invite comparison, and the album rarely does anything the originals did not. The writing is personal in a way the debut never was, particularly about being written off as a sibling. Likeable, well made, and clearly a step on the way.