Olivia Dean: Messy album review — smoky, self-assured London grooves

Receive free Albums updates

We’ll send you a myFT Daily Digest email rounding up the latest Albums news every morning.

There’s a certain type of London singer whose music epitomises the harmonious diversity that the city — viewed in a flattering light, through rose-tinted glasses — can seem to have perfected. The music might be about personal struggle, but it has a breezy multicultural feel, the organic sound of a mixed place at ease with itself. I’m thinking of Amy Winehouse, Neneh Cherry and Lily Allen, for instance, or Adele without the megastar trappings. Raye is a current example.

This is the tradition to which Olivia Dean belongs. Educated at the Brit School, an important stage-school training ground for the capital’s music scene, she began her career working with dance act Rudimental. With burgeoning solo success following a series of solo EPs, she now releases her debut album, Messy. It’s a mainstream pop record, but with a loose Londony informality amid the polish. You can hear the distant echo of rare groove and acid jazz.

Opening track “UFO” is an allegory about trying to master a strange, out-of-control vehicle without a map or knowledge of how it works. Call it young adulthood, or the apprehensive experience of launching a solo album on a major label. Either way, the 24-year-old in fact proceeds to turn in a self-assured, characterful performance. Her voice has the smoky haze of an old-school supper club. The music also has a vintage sheen, like the vinyl crackle and Lauryn Hill influences in “Danger”. (Dean’s middle name, Lauryn, is a parental tribute to the US singer.)

“Dive” is about being swept off one’s feet, anchored to a sturdy beat and lush retro-soul. “Ladies Room” builds a charge sheet against a negligent lover with a subtle increase in intensity, starting with lightly tripping pop-soul and ending with a pressing arrangement of horns and percussion. The title track is a slow-burner with murmured vocals and a mellow acoustic-guitar melody with a hint of bossa nova. Closing track “Carmen” uses steel pan drums to pay tribute to her grandmother, a Windrush-generation Caribbean immigrant whose strength in the face of adversity is held up as an emblem of London’s real-life diversity.

★★★★☆

‘Messy’ is released by EMI