Roll up your windows. Grab a hairbrush in your bedroom. Push "play." Lianne La Havas' second album, Blood, is our Album of the Week and, from the sound of it, could be the album that brings La Havas serious fame.
While I was listening, I kept thinking about Amy Winehouse and Adele — not because La Havas is copping their flow, but because she's got such power, strength, and control of her voice. She is able to sound raw, delicate and soft — or ferocious and in your face. She has the package to be a defining voice in the music world, but only time will tell if Blood will be her ticket to massive stardom.
Lianne La Havas counts Prince as one of her biggest fans. The Purple One featured her on one of his latest songs, brought her along to sing backup for his killer set on Saturday Night Live, and started off his tour of the U.K. with a show at La Havas's own house. You can hear a slight nod to Prince on the first track on Blood; "Unstoppable" could be a continuation of Prince's song, "Clouds." It starts out with a spacy and breathy cacophony of sound before it busts out into a funky soulful jam.
Blood showcases La Havas as a powerhouse vocalist, her voice lilting and floating like a butterfly over the music in one instant and slamming down with force and a gritty roughness the next moment. On "Green and Gold," Jamie Lidell helps La Havas find a dance groove and her low register; "Midnight" sounds like it could have been at home on Mark Ronson's latest album — heavy horns, some spacy vibes and strong vocals at the forefront; "Good Goodbye" is simple and stark with piano, guitar and La Havas showing off her pipes — the Adele moment on the album; and "Never Get Enough" drops into dance-land territory balancing light moments with some EDM pushes.
Blood doesn't necessarily feel like a cohesive, themed album, but it's a great showpiece to introduce Lianne La Havas as an artist to watch, and it's catchy as hell. It's an album you'll want to learn the lyrics of so you can sing along to it &hellip loudly.
Lianne La Havas plays the Varsity Theater on Tuesday, Oct. 6.