Celeste recently brought the glossy drama to Day Of The Jackal’s TV theme tune with ‘This Is Who I Am’. The English soul singer is a silky fit for swooning James Bond-style string arrangements while her powerful voice is a treacly rasp, a sugary bruise of resignation here on her second album, Woman Of Faces. This follows her chart topping 2021 debut Not Your Muse, and scores equally high on commercial appeal; the one-time singer of a John Lewis Christmas advert has been wrapped up with a big, radio-friendly, jazz-pop ribbon. 

In ‘Keep Smiling’ she sings of moth-to-the-flame moments with a man who’s made mistakes but still, ‘I’ll stretch my limbs to him evermore’. In ‘People Always Change’ (featuring exquisite ivories work from Philip Glass), Celeste is stuck in break-up inertia, defeated and fragile, with a voice that’s anything but. The label tries to go full Adele on bombastic ‘Could Be Machine’ and heavyweight US producers Dave ‘TV On The Radio’ Sitek, Beach Noise and Jeff Bhasker add ultra smooth pop finishes throughout. Two tracks at the end shimmy with 60s girl band pluckiness and potentially offer some overdue light at the end of her heartbroken tunnel.

The melancholia and studio-refined melodrama do wear thin over a full album, and listeners may find themselves craving more Shirley Bassey sass or Billie Holiday rawness, either of which Celeste might show us somewhere down the line. For now, please enjoy big, if slightly overworked, pop torch songs par excellence.

Woman Of Faces is released by Polydor on Friday 14 November.