Lianne La Havas
Blood

Nominated for the 2012 Mercury Prize for her debut "Is Your Love Big Enough?", as well as neo-protégée of Prince, the twenty-six-year-old Lianne La Havas, former backing singer for Paloma Faith, has managed in just a few years of career to build a respectable following in the land of Albion, to the point that each of her releases or performances is generally met with a certain enthusiasm. It's not hard to see why: despite her youth, the London singer-songwriter is endowed with a surprising maturity and interpretative class, as well as songwriting skills that are far from negligible, both in terms of the music and the lyrics.

It's not surprising, then, that there was a fair amount of hype surrounding the release of "Blood," her second studio effort, and fortunately, the expectations were not disappointed: although in more than one instance she distances herself from the predominantly acoustic sounds of her debut and opts for a more varied production (six producers were called into play compared to the single one on the previous record), in the new album, La Havas manages to effortlessly range from neo-soul, R&B to the folk of her first work, contaminating her British attitude and natural elegance with her Jamaican origins (the blood in the title) while always maintaining a stylistic coherence that makes "Blood" varied, yet compact from start to finish. Add to all this a warm and velvety voice, capable of navigating well between the strings and brass (sometimes a bit pompous, but never unpleasant) of tracks such as the lead singles "Unstoppable" and "What You Don't Do," or that genuine show of force which is "Midnight," as well as in delicate acoustic textures and minimal arrangements ("Tokyo," "Green & Gold," "Wonderful," "Ghost"), without ever falling into sterile virtuosity, and you have nothing less than one of the best albums of its genre this year. It certainly lacks that spark, that something extra that would allow this record to aspire to masterpiece status, but it's not out of the question that it will come sooner or later: La Havas possesses all the means necessary for this to happen and it will surely be interesting to see what she will propose in the future.