In music, as in life, there’s some truth to the phrase ‘it’s not what you know, it’s who you know’. So often we are presented with a list of collaborators along with a single or album, while ‘hitmaker’ has become a word used with alarming regularity by people you would expect to know better. Into this maelstrom strides Jessie Ware’s second album, ‘Tough Love’.
Its list of production credits and co-writes - a big hello to Miguel, Dev Hynes, Ed Sheeran and pals - is duly impressive, but uniformly complementary to what is an evolutionary move forward by Ware, who has stepped out into the slipstream created by ‘Devotion' and shot for pop gold.
‘Tough Love’ is an album that understands the various modes of heartbreak, a record both unflinchingly sad and redemptive. The melodies are mighty, the sentiments sincere and delivered in a manner that should make Ware a much needed ally for honesty in the manicured pop world.
It’s terribly easy to turn this sort of stuff into overwrought exercises in forced tear jerking, but Ware’s far too open and unvarnished to let that happen. Her words deal with love’s many machinations with a redoubtable commitment to the facts, lending emotional heft to an album that can also be pored over as an example of modern production craft.
At its best moments - the title track’s glacial cool or as Kind Of...Sometimes...Maybe rolls out a classic pop hook over sub bass - the combination seems effortless. But, it’s even more noticeable when Ware’s candour unlocks new levels in songs that could have slipped by almost unnoticed.
Say You Love Me is, in some ways, one of the record’s more rote ballads, but it’s utterly disarming once Ware gets to its perceptive chorus: “I don’t want to fall in love if you don’t want to try. But all that I’ve been thinking of is, maybe, that you might.”
Too much of our time is wasted on bad love songs. In fact, so much of our time has been frittered away that investing what little we have left in the affairs of the heart can seem a little careless. Here’s an album to change all that.
Jessie Ware Upcoming Tour Dates are as follows:
Tue January 20 2015 - BELFAST Mandela Hall
Fri January 23 2015 - EDINBURGH Queens Hall Edinburgh
Sat January 24 2015 - LEEDS O2 Academy Leeds
Sun January 25 2015 - MANCHESTER Academy
Tue January 27 2015 - BRISTOL Colston Hall
Thu January 29 2015 - LONDON O2 Academy Brixton
Fri January 30 2015 - LONDON O2 Academy Brixton
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