Adele/ 30

BY NARENDRA KUSNUR 

Adele/ 30

Genre: Pop

Label: Columbia-Sony

Rating: ****

A gap of six years is pretty long for someone who's scaled so many heights so early in her career. Naturally, there has been much anticipation about Adele Adkins's new album. With a track record that includes huge hits like 'Rolling In The Deep', 'Set Fire To The Rain', 'Skyfall' and 'Hello', expectations have been huge.

With a voice that can reach the highest notes with effortless ease and quiver with emotion with each syllable, Adele has been one of the most brilliant singers one could hear. And that quality was immediately noticed on last month's release of 'Easy On Me', the first single from her new album. "I had no time to choose, what I chose to do, so go easy on me", sang the Britisher in her characteristic fashion.

Like her previous albums, the title of 30 has been inspired by the age at which she wrote the songs. It's a different matter that she had turned 33 by the time this one was released. As the songs were written in the aftermath of her divorce with Simon Konecki, they are personal and blunt, dealing with heartbreak, loss, acceptance and moving on, with one piece 'My Little Love' even involving a conversation with her son.

Post-divorce albums are nothing new, recent examples being Kacey Musgraves's Star-Crossed and Anoushka Shankar's Love Letters. Naturally, similar emotions and expressions have been heard before. Where Adele is unique is her own singing stamp, the choice of lyrical matter and the impact she creates with her renditions.

The route she chooses is interesting. Instead of sticking entirely to the formula of alternating between the middle and higher registers and overdoing the 'Adele scream', she varies her style,  working with producers over six songs. There's a lot of stuff that's quite contrasting from 'Easy On Me'.

Thus, she uses a West End-like arrangement style on the opening, strings-heavy 'Strangers By Nature', where she sings, "I'll be taking flowers to the cemetery of my heart". One finds the theatrical element on 'My Little Love', involving a mother-son dialogue, and on the closing, chorus-peppered 'Love Is A Game', with its explosive crescendo. Yet the songs sound different in their own way.

'Cry Your Heart Out' traverses rhythm n' blues territory, with the back-up going, "When you're in doubt, go at your own pace". A sample from late jazz pianist Errol Garner adds a twist to 'All Night Parking'. A crisp acoustic guitar provides a backdrop to 'Can I Get It'.

Though a couple of songs in the middle ('Oh My God and 'I Drink Wine') seem like fillers, perhaps like experiments gone awry, the Adele class is in full bloom on the later songs. On 'Woman Like Me' she doesn't resort to any vocal calisthenics. It's a simple song where she sings, "Complacency is the worst trait to have, are you crazy, you ain't ever had a woman like me".

Besides the first single 'Easy On Me', which is structurally reminiscent of her earlier 'When We Were Young', two other songs define the Adele style as we know it, as she slowly moves into the higher notes and stuns you with her sheer power. 'Hold On' is a plea to be patient, using a cross-chorus that heightens the effect.

Finally, there's 'To Be Loved', an autobiographical masterpiece which sums up what the album - and to a large extent what Adele - is all about. Backed by a simple piano, it begins with a narrative of past emotions, and slowly moves into another planet of raw brilliance as she sings, "Let it be known that I tried". If anybody wants to cover Adele's songs, this should be the ultimate aim to be judged for perfection.

In terms of Adele's growth as an artiste, 30 is a definite sign of her grace, maturity and versatility. However, one doesn't know how much to believe the extreme media buzz, with almost all British and American publications unanimously declaring that this is her best album, almost as if they sat with the Adele PR machinery to say they will all agree on that (while dissing ABBA's comeback album Voyage which is brilliant in its own way).

One must keep in mind the fact that most of Adele's work has been personal in nature. Hence, her experiences at 19 and 21 will obviously be different from how she has felt at 25 and 30. This would have been naturally reflected in the content of her songs. Her new record is a perfect capture and summation of what she's gone through at a particular phase of her life - whether it's her best or not can be left to subjective preference.