Whoever made the call to release Rumer’s third album this week knew their business: it’s easy-listening season. We are now in the perfect time for misty strings and mellow voices and bittersweet emotions and melodies that twist on copper-toned minor notes like falling leaves.
Right on time, the 21st-century’s answer to Karen Carpenter returns with another classily crafted comfort blanket of a record. She has said it is the “real” follow-up to her platinum-selling debut Seasons of My Soul (2010) rather than 2012’s covers collection Boys Don’t Cry which was an open attempt to buy time while she struggled with depression.
The 35-year-old singer-songwriter wrote the lead single Dangerous (currently the most played record on Radio 2) about the risk she was taking with her mental health by returning to the music business. However, she’s flipped these feelings neatly into a catchily conflicted love song with a peppy little disco beat that’s new for her. When she sings: “You want me to let go/ You want me to lose control/ But I don’t want to lose control,” she could be directly addressing the critics who find her too smooth and safe.
But she clearly makes music to soothe herself and others and I am more than happy for her to dip her evident emotional pain in molten chocolate, because she makes such good-quality chocolate. All that heartache just melts in her mouth.
The Telegraph
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