SIDE A 1. Hello 2. Send My Love (To Your New Lover) 3. I Miss You 4. When We Were Young 5. Remedy
SIDE B 6. Water Under The Bridge 7. River Lea 8. Love In The Dark 9. Million Years Ago 10. All I Ask 11. Sweetest Devotion ꟷꟷꟷꟷꟷꟷꟷꟷꟷꟷꟷꟷ Autobiography
is baked into Adele's art. She called her first album 19, naming it
after her age at the time of writing, and like a musical, millennial
Michael Apted, each successive album represented another chapter in her
life's story. Fueled by heartbreak, her roiling 2011 record 21 ushered
in her adulthood and superstardom, two acts that were instrumental in
the creation of 25, the 2015 album purportedly documenting her
mid-twenties. Between 21 and 25, Adele fell in love and started a
family, an event that would surely be grist for a memoirist's mill if
Adele was as confessional a singer/songwriter as she appears, but she is
not. Like 21 before it, the love that flows through 25 is either
curdled or lost, love that can no longer replenish or nourish. It is
certainly not the kind of love that would arise from a satisfying,
stable relationship, but it is indeed the kind of love that is
recognizable from 21: love that hurts, not heals. While her themes may
remain the same, Adele isn't the same singer as she was in 2011, nor is
25 a carbon copy of 21. Success has given her the confidence to abandon
any lingering Amy Winehouse influence, taking along with it any sense of
swing or sass. Max Martin and Shellback give "Send My Love (To Your New
Lover)" a subdued, spliced electronic pulse, just enough of a rhythm to
distinguish the track from the rest of the record. But it and the
cinematically surging "Water Under the Bridge" -- a song begging to be
played over the closing credits of an inspirational biopic -- wither
when compared to the wallop of "Rolling in the Deep." This stateliness
is intentional, forcing attention with both the full force gale that is
Adele's voice and, not so coincidentally, her placid good taste. It
isn't so much that Adele doesn't take risks -- she's hip enough to
enlist Haim/Charli XCX's producer to helm "When We Were Young," a song
co-written with hotly tipped sensitive soul Tobias Jesso, Jr., and she
brings in Danger Mouse to help orchestrate the neo-gospel of "River
Lea." But she's so devoted to ballads, ballads determined to convey
grace and strength in the face of loss that she winds up residing in a
middle of the road, which makes her seem much older than the quarter
century of the title. Adele doesn't help matters by dwelling on the
passage of time, repeatedly returning to the idea that she ain't a kid
anymore. It's a sentiment that suits a singer many years past 25 yet
also suggests a bit of savvy on her part: these are songs that are meant
to be heard -- and sung -- for years after the album's initial release,
gathering resonance with the passage of time. Fittingly, 25 also plays
better over the long haul, its march of slow songs steadily revealing
subtle emotional or musical distinctions. Make no mistake, all 11 songs
are of a piece -- they're shaded by melancholy, gaining most of their
power through performance -- but that cohesive sound only accentuates
how Adele has definitively claimed this arena of dignified heartbreak as
her own.
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