Album Review: Joy Crookes – Juniper
3 min read
There’s something timeless about Joy Crookes’ music – a blend of classic soul warmth, jazz sophistication, and a lyrical honesty that makes her stand out. Since her Mercury Prize–nominated breakout album Skin in 2021, the South-Londoner has become one of the UK’s more compelling newer artists, weaving intimate lyrics with socially aware stories. Juniper, released through Sony, is her sophomore album, and looks to lean further into what is a winning formula, whilst also showing an evolving artist who can retain the soul of debut outing – Let’s get right into this one… I’m looking forward to this.
Brave is a fantastic song to kick of proceedings – soulful, sultry, and the orchestra in the background creates a sumptuous blend, and is followed by Pass the Salt which is an angrier track (though still soulful), though the addition of Vince Staples vocals I found to be pretty pointless. Carmen is fantastic – lyrically I feel it’s about adoration, almost obsession, of another… not sexually, just an admiration. Perfect Crime is another belter, more upbeat but still Neo Soul, and I love the bass throughout the track, while Mathematics slows it down once more… but again the male vocal of Kano, for me, seems an odd fit.
House With A Pool has a fantastic laid back beat with a light feel to it, which works really well with the vocals to create a sumptuous melody in a dreamy mid-tempo track, while I Know You’d Kill ups the tempo and features a great horn arrangement in this skip beat, 60’s feeling track, and First Last Dance follows with a similar tempo but with a much more down feeling to it. Mother is slower tempo, a sad track, with a clear maternal friction as the lyrical centrepiece, whereas Somebody To You is probably my favourite track on the album – it just has good a great tonal mix between the vocals and instrumentation, which has that laid back soulful quality in a mid-tempo that most of my favourite Crookes tracks have. Penultimate track Forever is the true down tempo torch song of the album, with amazing lyrics and a distorted electric piano that kicks in about two-thirds through which sends chills down my spine. Rounding off the album, we are offered Paris – a slow building instrumental leading to pure Neo Soul, and a seeming build-up of noise and sounds to give the illusion of increased tempo as the track progresses – fantastic clever stuff.
Ok, so straight to it – Juniper is a very strong release. It’s going straight into my exclusive downloaded albums on Spotify. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not something I’d play in the car or if I’m on a bit of a ‘Debbie Downer’ day, but in the right time and place… I really rate it as a collective, and there are a few tracks in isolation that are very strong in their own right. The only mini-gripe I have is the male vocals – there was no need for any of the collab/featuring artists to be present IMO. If you like down tempo Neo Soul, you really should have checked this out already, and if you’re not sure or aren’t a fan, then you should give this a listen – it’s some of the best 2020’s examples of the genre that are out there.
