Oleta Adams
Circle Of One

THE REVIEW

I don't know a damn thing about this woman. Her human and musical background, nothing at all, whether her father was a preacher, if she started singing in church, if she grew up with gospel, if she hated religion but believed in God; I don't know if in front of the “mirror” she is the same as a thousand clichés of this kind or completely different. Nothing. I know nothing and will say nothing.

The Soul, the Gospel. The soul thrown like this, on a plate, in a cassette player, on a CD player, in a car, MP3 player, iPod, etc., etc.… like raw flesh, something disgusting, yes, the soul, I don’t even know what it is, how to describe it, outline it, what it is not. I am ignorant and also brazen, I'm not ashamed of it.

Having said all that (practically nothing): Track after track this album bites your nails, makes you shed tears, gulp, smile; sometimes it leaves you indifferent for a couple of minutes, just enough time to grab you by the throat and drag you into a blind alley of your own soul, make you lose, find yourself again, like a session of psychoanalysis that dredges up a bad thought that your mind had rightly abolished, you are powerless when she presents herself like this, disarmed and disarming, unadorned, with only the piano surrounding her sublime voice in a cascade of notes that are useless because they neither add nor take away anything, and I don’t even know when the period will come at the end of this sentence, because I’m not writing it, I'm riding the wave of emotion, and this cannot be a critical review, because my critical spirit is nullified, you could die from the desire for stuff like this, which annuls you and at the same time enriches you a little.  The period has come.

Perhaps the best way to appreciate this “Circle of One” is to know nothing about it, to put it on when you are alone and a little defenseless because you are unprepared, because if you don’t start thinking of an album as a masterpiece, you expect nothing, and then you are ready to be overwhelmed. I got hit square in the face, like a truck, it knocked me down, and if I get up, it’s to listen to it again.

In the end, I don’t even know if I like this album, if it’s worth one or five stars. I know that I listened to it, listened to it, and listened to it, and that I will listen to it again and again. Or maybe I won’t. But it has left its mark right here, I feel pain here, under the sternum, it hurts, a tremendous and wonderful pain. I want more albums like this, of those that you don’t know how you found and if you will find again, as always, magically, by chance.