Spins: Album reviews

Chrisette Michele – Epiphany

Artist: Chrisette Michele
Title: Epiphany
Label: Def Jam
Genre: Soul/Pop

Grammy winning artist Chrisette Michele stormed onto the scene with her jazzy throwback vocals and confident songwriting on her debut, I Am. After selling 500,000 copies the pressure was on to deliver a comparable followup. The resulting album, Epiphany, succeeds at showcasing Michele’s growing talent as an impressive vocalist and compelling writer but as a whole doesn’t have the same excitement of her debut.

This is not to say that Epiphany is a failure in any sense of the word. While the album is rather diverse, easily swimming from radio-friendly ballads and 60s pop influenced jams, the bouncy effervescent jazzy hip-hop flavor that made I Am so interesting is noticeably missing. Epiphany leans more towards the adult contemporary sound that was also a strong component of I Am. This allows her to show off her considerable vocal range especially on tracks like “Blame It On Me”, “All I Ever Think About”, and the big ballad “I’m Okay.” Michele recruited Ne-Yo to assist and this results in some of the album’s standouts such as the declaration of independence “Epiphany (I’m Leaving)” and the uptempo “What You Do”. These two tracks come close to the flavor of I Am’s more hip-hop oriented tracks but they leave the listener wanting more. However, Chrisette is right at home channelling her inner Amy Winehouse on the 60s flavored “Mr. Right”. The finger snapping groove works comfortably with the singer’s husky tones to producer the album’s strongest track.

Chrisette Michele is an extremely talented artist and she isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. While her sophomore effort finds her growing considerably in many ways it still would have been nice if she had left a little more funk in the equation.

- Sean Garnett

www.myspace.com/chrisettemichele

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