Strength of a Woman Review

The material was there. Her marriage and business partnership collapsed at the same time, and the songs that go straight at it are the best of her late period. Thick of It is a proper single, wounded and specific, and Set Me Free is furious in a way she rarely allows herself on record, naming the betrayal and refusing to be gracious about it. Those two suggest an album that could have stood beside her nineties work.

What surrounds them dilutes it. The features feel like they were added at the label rather than the studio, several tracks retreat into the safe language of self care and moving on, and the tonal whiplash between raw and reassuring undoes the momentum every few songs. She sings all of it beautifully. But an album about a betrayal has to stay in the wound, and this one keeps stepping out to remind you it is fine now. It is not a record you put on twice.