Village

"For all its strengths, Village is inconsistent and the songs often seem to be aiming for sentiments they don't quite reach. Overloaded with ideas, several songs on the second half could have been left off the album and resulted in a bolder whole. Though Banks never drowns under his own ambition on Village, the album struggles with focus. Inspired songs compete with lesser tracks in almost equal numbers, giving the album more of a mixtape feel than the statement it could have made with more fastidious editing".

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"A future-soul man, Jacob Banks has been around for some time, his traction established by 2017's The Boy Who Cried Freedom EP. In contrast to the vogue for male singer-songwriters with wobbly bottom lips, Banks has a bear of a voice. Born in Nigeria and raised in Birmingham, his command of blues grit and electronic spell-casting is borderless ... Songs such as Love Ain't Enough insert a soupçon of UK garage and Jamaican dancehall into the mix, while Keeps Me Going is palpably African in inspiration. These touches reflect the album's mission to show how it took several villages to raise Banks - several thousand miles apart. Overall, though, the daring fusions of ancient and modern dry up; when you want it to grab you by the lapels, Village is more than a little middle-of-the-road. That may not be a criticism, though, if you're aiming for Adele fans".

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