The London Songstress: Her Latest Album Analysis – Sadness Made Sublime by Urban Soulfulness and Snappy Wit

Within the saturated music industry, where artists are encouraged to stay perpetually visible and flow of what’s depressingly termed “content”, South London’s own artist Joy Crookes’s journey has advanced in a unusual series of fits and starts.

After releasing a series of EPs, she closed out the last decade as a hotly tipped artist: appearances on Later … With Jools Holland, shortlisted for the prestigious newcomer award, placed high in the BBC’s Sound of 2020, and invited to open for a global superstar on tour.

But the latter was nixed by the pandemic, and her major success didn’t arrive for almost 24 months: released at the tail-end of 2021, her first full-length Skin charted highly and, in Feet Don’t Fail Me Now, spawned one of those long-tail viral hits that gains a weird omnipresence despite barely grazing the Top 30.

She began crafting a follow-up, then vanished again. The four years that divide her debut from Juniper were in large part taken up by a period when she was “really sick” and “emotionally fragile”.

An Introspective Album

It’s a period clearly influences the contents of Juniper: “I’m so sick, I’m exhausted, I can’t keep losing my mind,” she voices on opener Brave; “I’m pretty fucking miserable,” runs the blunt chorus of Mathematics, ostensibly a breakup song that seems underpinned by something noticeably darker than love troubles alone.

One might say that Juniper’s introspective tone has its trade-offs – there’s no room for the kind of sharp, social commentary about Brexit, gentrification and migration that peppered Skin – but Crookes is an impressively snappy wordsmith who comes across as smart, worldly and gobby regardless of the personal trauma she’s exploring.

Avoiding Platitudes

Moreover, she consistently avoids the typical self-help platitudes about the kind of subjects Juniper addresses, from unhealthy attachments to intergenerational trauma.

One poignant track, about abusive relationships, and another song, about unattainable beauty standards, are even more impactful for their light approach and avoidance of sentimentality in favour of wit.

That song dispenses with easy answers about the need to love yourself or how everyone is beautiful, and instead concludes unreconciled, with Crookes still looking bitterly at its “attractive” titular character: “Why must I strive harder for only a fraction of what you got?”

Innovative Sound

Her sound is likewise an impressively fresh and unique take on the well-known. The songs have big choruses and strong melodies – strong enough, in the case of Carmen, that it holds its own even when its backing track borrowing something as immediately recognisable as the staccato piano line from Elton John’s Bennie and the Jets.

It’s easy to label their style as post-Amy Winehouse vintage-inspired: electric pianos and lush orchestration; warm, organic bass and drums; the occasional touch of distortion on Crookes’s voice, which slip from husky intensity and lightly jazz-inflected to more conversational, rap-informed rhythms.

Atmospheric Production

It might come across as ordinary, but it does not, because it’s viewed through an delicately hazy filter. Synthesizers, harps and organ glow and drift abstractly around the sound, the aural equivalent of catching something in the corner of your eye.

There are liberal applications of spacious reverb; each element has a slightly woozy, late-night feel. Hearing the deep low-end of Perfect Crime, or Pass the Salt, propelled by a fantastic drum loop taken from Serge Gainsbourg and including a brief but explosive cameo from Vince Staples, you sense that Crookes has an deep appreciation for trip-hop in its earliest, innovative form.

Eclectic Influences

It joins Crookes’s notably diverse list of inspirations: you really don’t get a lot of singer-songwriters in today’s music scene name-checking reggae legends, the Pogues and Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan in interviews.

A Rare Misstep

It missteps once. A particular song feels unexpectedly upbeat given the moody surroundings it’s placed among, a situation not much helped by its tune, which has a peculiar 80s Euro-pop vibe.

But one distracting stumble doesn’t matter much given how strong the rest of Juniper is, how clearly it asserts Crookes’s gift as a vocalist and songwriter.

Worth the Wait

There are some big names here – in addition to Staples, Kano turns up on Mathematics, while a rock star contributes vocals to Somebody to You – but the main attraction never feels outshone or crowded out.

Crookes has publicly worried about the gap between her sophomore release and her debut: “Will people still care?” she asked openly not long ago. You can understand why, but Juniper proves worth anticipating.