Album Review: Celeste – Woman Of Faces
2 min read
Celeste’s second album, Woman Of Faces, finds her leaning into a narrower, more cinematic lane than the bold soul-pop that introduced her on Not Your Muse. The record, nine songs in total, is presented as a short, concentrated suite built from orchestral swells, hushed bedroom moments and the odd burst of electronics. It’s more about mood, character and the small, precise details of a voice that knows how to hold a room.
The opening track On With The Show sets the tone as a quiet drama that feels like a curtain being pulled back slowly rather than a spotlight being switched on. Celeste’s phrasing is patient, she lets a few syllables breathe until the strings push the line into an operatic tumble. Keep Smiling follows like a wry aside, a song that pairs brittle, stage-ready lyrics with a softer piano core and a delivery that flirts between vulnerability and defiance. The title track, Woman Of Faces, is the conceptual centrepiece composed of stately strings, a sense of theatrical narrative and lyrics about the masks people ask you to wear – a woman observed by a thousand little faces.
Coming up to mid-album, Happening Again and Time Will Tell slow the pace further into introspective territory. Happening Again is a mournful, late-night song whose restraint is its strength, the production gives Celeste room to inhabit silence as much as sound. Time Will Tell has a gentle pulse throughout, suggesting the passing of decisions and the weight of consequences. People Always Change and Sometimes operate as the album’s more reflective pieces – intimate arrangements, close-miked vocals and lyrics that feel like confessions told to a friend in the dark. Across these tracks the album’s tendency toward minimal percussion and jazz undertones becomes an obvious aesthetic choice, one that foregrounds timbre and phrasing over beats and hooks.
The final pair of songs provide an emotional payoff. Could Be Machine is the rare moment where electronics briefly crack the surface, a sharp and emotional, almost eerie track that gestures at how technology and performance can dehumanise as well as empower. Then comes This Is Who I Am, a closing statement that pays off everything that’s come before it – a big voiced, microphone clutching declaration in the tradition of great showstoppers, where Celeste’s timbre goes full, joyous, bruised and triumphant.
Woman Of Faces is a rather uniform album that has a slow-burning pace. As a sequence it rewards focused listening and the moments that soar really do soar. For anyone who fell for Celeste the first time, Woman Of Faces deepens our understanding of her through this smaller yet wiser record that trusts silence and texture as much as melody.
