Adele: 19

Adele's stardom is pretty well-deserved. Of all the songs you hear 5000 times a week, you could do a lot worse than "Rolling in the Deep." It's the ideal pop vocal showcase, and anytime I get tired of it, I just hum it to myself as "Rolling in the Derp," and chuckle at my stupid internet jokes. The rest of that album -- to the extent we've had it on as background music -- is enjoyable enough that I don't feel like a sell-out for recommending it to all the moms and grandmas that come by asking for it.

For my tastes, however, I prefer her debut album, which relies less on slick, super-sized production and more on her vocal ability. Most of the album places her rich, soulful vocals in front of a minimal background, like the shuffling bass on "Best for Last" or the glockenspiel(?) on "First Love." She carries the load very well on tracks like these, emoting clearly and expressing herself with simplicity. It was fitting that I first listened to it on a drizzly spring afternoon. It's good and laid back, and good for sitting back with.

You can't mistake simplicity with shallowness, of course. When she hurts, she hurts openly, and when she pines, it seems most honest. And when it really kicks into high gear, it provides a good hint as to the direction she's recently taken her music. "Chasing Pavements," one of the main singles off this album, is as massive a ballad as I might be apt to want. It swells from a minimalistic intro to an orchestral chorus whose lyrics I don't really get, but don't need to, from the way she sings them. It's even stronger because the verses have, instead of a pretty MOR fillerness, a solid R&B swagger, suggesting a confidence that magnifies whatever pain Adele feels, for having gotten through to her. This is also true for the album's other key ballads, like "Melt My Heart to Stone," where she creates a vocal effect similar to guitar distortion when she wails, "You say my name like there could be an us." I once read that distortion was an audio shorthand for authenticity: it must sound real to the listener because it's not being cleaned up. Adele uses it extremely well in her vocal technique. The Bob Dylan cover, "Make You Feel My Love" is ace.

I mentioned swagger, and yes, the album's got some solid beat on it. Take the vintage-sounding booty-shaker "Cold Shoulder," (with Motown-esque strings keeping the proceedings strangely light.) Only the "Time and time again" bridge reveals it as a modern composition. See also the slinky cafe-tinged "My Same," the first recorded instance of "Pfft" I've ever heard. As the track goes on, the backing track rises up to meet her, thickening but never becoming too strong for her vocals.

A couple of tracks get into me more than others. One is "Right as Rain," whose keyboarded-up funk gets a bit like Stevie Wonder, but you know, with lady bits, and sight. The groove is so natural it manages to stay put through the verses, the transition and the chorus, and stay effective in all cases. The other is the swirling "Tired," which has a nimble synth back and dark undertones. It sounds like the only art project on the album, but it has enough of a hook to keep it firmly, definitively as a pop tune, which makes it a bit jagged. It's breezy, yet weighted down, an unlikely yet apt summing up of the rest of the album.

As good as "Hometown Glory," the album closer is, it's the one that does the least for Adele herself, a piano ballad that foregrounds the lush production rather than the vocals, which you probably wouldn't think much of if it appeared in an ad for next week's Grey's Anatomy, and which points the most to the sound of her next album (ie "Turning Tables.") This isn't a bad thing, but it takes it a peg down from the rest of the album in my own opinion, since I've been championing the "less is more" approach taken elsewhere on the album, where the music has to stand behind her, rather than the opposite.

Still, the album is a strong argument as to why she deserves whatever success she's gotten. The material on this album is strong and extremely well-delivered, taking care in most cases to keep the focus on the vocalist herself rather than the supporting sounds in the songs. Best is how many of the songs are so minmal and so off-kilter that she manages to challenge pop expectations will delivering on them. Earth-shattering maybe not, but for the staid and steady world of radio singles, it's streets ahead.

Buy this album from iTunes now!