To Dust
Alice Russell
[three and a half stars]
Coming to
notice early in her career via collaborations with Quantic, Bah Samba and
Nostalgia 77 in the early 2000s (and more recently with Fatboy Slim and David
Byrne), British singer Alice Russell has slowly but steadily risen through the
ranks of blue-eyed soul music. She’s also released a series of strong solo
records, the latest of which is To Dust, a solid fusion of old and new. The
pithy ‘A to Z’ opens the affair, its laidback funk shimmer melding well with a
sharp pop edge. It lays a foundation for the rest of the album – that marriage
of old-school and modern – but that balancing act never gets in the way of what
the album is really about: Russell’s voice. It will no doubt draw comparisons
to Adele’s, but where Russell stamps her own mark is how easy she makes it
sound. Whether slow and simple (the horn-laden ‘Twin Peaks’) or free-flowing
and powerful (the gritty ‘Heartbreaker’), Russell makes it clear that she’s at
the forefront of the new soul movement.
Samuel J. Fell
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