Music

There’s a world of difference between getting the royal hump and storming off, and simply counting your losses and moving on. Twenty-seven-year-old west Londoner Estelle Swaray did very much the latter when she decamped to New York in May last year and we’d be the last to blame her for leaving. Estelle’s 2004 debut album, ‘The 18th Day’ was a (mostly) terrific exercise in bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, hip hop-soul-cum-R&B-pop and featured blinding, summer hit single, ‘1980’. By rights, she should have become a major contender but, despite handing her the MOBO gong for Best Newcomer in 2004, the UK singularly failed to fire Estelle into the pop-star firmament. Shame on us.

Second LP ‘Shine’ is the opportunity for us to redeem our lapse of judgment. Now signed to to John Legend’s Homeschool label, Estelle has sensibly set her sights on the US, hiring several big-name producers (Swizz Beats, Mark Ronson, will.i.am) and high-profile vocalists (Kanye West, Cee-Lo Green, Wyclef Jean, Legend himself) to help her engineer a sophisticated yet street-smart, ‘urban’ hybrid that doesn’t compromise her uniquely British voice one bit. Opener ‘Wait A Minute (Just A Touch)’ – a club-friendly killer that riffs on Screamin’ Jay Hawkins’ ‘I Put A Spell On You’ – sets the bar high, but cool, Kanye-featuring single ‘American Boy’ easily matches it. Other highlights are the ragga-pumped ‘So Much Out The Way’ and the wryly autobigraphical title track, which has ‘hit single’ stamped all over it. Estelle’s vocal chops (she can ‘do’ both Lauryn Hill’s sweet soul and Warrior Queen’s rapid, dancehall chat) are mightily impressive and ‘Shine’ is one slam-dunk of a comeback album.