Venus Blake

It's pretty well established that Adele is currently the black hole at the centre of the music industry galaxy. Upon the release of her latest record, the singer smashed streaming records, single-handedly brought back CDs, and brought the vinyl production sector to its knees. Anything that doesn't have the side profile of her face on it, likely won't get pressed for another 12 months. Needless to say, Adele is the musical story of the year. If there's anything the industry loves more than a hot new talent, it's hot new talent that sounds just like old talent. So of course, every singer with an emotional ballad in them will be putting their best Adele-like heel forward.

So it's only natural that artists are going to lean into their Adele-ish tendencies when releasing a record to capture some of the momentum there is right now for the heart-wrenching ballad. On her latest album The Other Side of Midnight, singer-songwriter Venus Blake delivers a set of dark, dramatic tracks designed to tug on the heartstrings and exorcise the demons in our lives. Flowing piano accompanies her soaring vocals as she dives into themes of isolation, existential dread, splintered relationships, and the vices that come with trying to grasp the conundrums of this life. The album is top-loaded with its passionate ballads that would typically sit further back in the album with the more classic style openers finding themselves mid-album. In this blink and you'll miss it Spotify environment, sequencing has to take that into account.

Gorgeous vocal harmonies are joined by a tension-filled piano on the album opener 'Hungry Ghosts'. Blake's way of intertwining chords with lyrical melodies recalls some of Jewel's classic ballads. The singer longs for connection as an outsider seeking others who live out on the fringes “On the other side of midnight, on the dark side of the moon”. 'Red Wine', 'Tragedy', and 'Love We Lost' follow the same equation of piano and impassioned, soul-bearing vocals delving into toxic relationships and the coping mechanisms used to overcome them.

'Here Comes the Flood' introduces drums for the first time with a heavy-footed saunter popularized by the fiery female singers of the 90s. The track evokes Fiona Apple at her vitriolic high in the time of When the Pawn... The segue 'The Wanderlust Interlude' brings out a tender side with a music box intro that builds to an enchanted fairy tale's soundtrack. The standout track of the album 'Chocolate Morphine' embraces trip-hop elements as synths and sparse percussion guide Blake's beautiful vocal lines. She grapples with the cold face of the modern cosmopolitan landscape, dreaming of a deeper, more tantalizing and engaging world beyond it. A 21st-century anthem of alienation. On 'Me and the Sea', Blake forgoes instrumentation to sing a mournful sea shanty to the “ghosts of the past”. The track is spellbinding and wonderfully executed.

On The Other Side of Midnight, Venus Blake bears her soul, admitting to the loneliness and confusion that one can find walking through this world. The songs are simultaneously raw and elegant. The opening may lean too heavily on the quiet ballads which somewhat buries the lead. It's hard to tell whether it was an artistic or marketing choice. Either way, it pays to listen to the whole album to get the full scope of what she's trying to accomplish.