The architect

"British vocalist Paloma Faith returns with her ambitious fourth album, 2017's effusive and sophisticated The Architect. The album follows her platinum-earning 2014 effort A Perfect Contradiction, and once again features a bevy of polished anthems marked by Faith's soulful voice and penchant for hooky, classic-styled R&B, disco, and pop ... With The Architect, Faith has constructed an album of empowered, mainstream pop that retains all of the complexity, artfulness, and raw emotion of her previous work".

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"After perfecting her mildly kooky retro-soul sound across three albums, The Architect messes with the Paloma Faith formula, lyrics-wise at least. Gently pulsating lead single Crybaby, for example, is about fragile masculinity; the title track is a typically dramatic ballad sung from the perspective of planet Earth addressing humanity, while the doo-wop stylings of WW3 deal with impending catastrophe. For the most part these more outward-looking conceits are housed in familiar musical settings - the Bond theme-lite Guilty feels like a song she's released five times already - but there's fun to be had in Til I'm Done's plastic disco shimmy and the skipping, featherlight pop of Kings and Queens".

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