Rose In The Dark

Description

A year after lighting up rapper Little Simz’s Selfish, Cleo Sol releases her first album on Forever Living (SAULT’s label). A captivating mantra, layered vocals, and martial syncopations set the scene on the intro One love. Like the gently percussive Why don’t you and its intoxicatingly undulating chorus, the Englishwoman often opts for an intimate minimalism. But not without a musically nuanced palette, where reminiscences of the Philly Sound (Her light set with Stylistics-Delfonics-style choirs), neo-soul boom-bap inflections (Rewind and its prominent bassline), and delicious hints of reggae lovers rock (the iridescent Young love) intertwine. The singer evokes Lauryn Hill on the guitar-and-voice ballad Butterfly, Amel Larrieux and Solange on a radiant Rose in the dark where chiming keyboards respond to the back-and-forth of a wah-wah, and Aaliyah on the stripped-down, jazzy Sideways, for her way of tracing arabesques by cooing in the highs and vibrating in the lows. Text by: SoulBag