All Saints’ fifth album starts with a spoken-word segment recounting a mother’s prophecy about being torn between two kinds of men: those who will give you the life you want, and those offering the love you desire. But the song itself, Who Do You Love, presents a different kind of crossroads: are All Saints harking back to the infamous spoken-word bit that opened their classic 1997 single Never Ever, or setting the scene for an attempt at a Beyoncé-style Serious Album? The answer, going by the inclusion of two “interludes” on a 13-track album, appears to be both.
Neither lands. Despite having almost identical personnel to All Saints’ 2016 comeback Red Flag, Testament fails to recapture its surprisingly assured ease. The production is a mess. It is anyone’s guess why the only 90s girlband who could actually sing would crowd their enduring harmonies with chaotic digital clutter, but the four-piece are lost beneath the pixellated junkyard production (on Three Four), left eating dust by breathless drum’n’bass breakdowns (Love Lasts Forever), or pummelled by weirdly incessant tribal drums (No Issues). Much of Testament is clenched and over-serious: Fumes’ Middle Eastern tinges and portentous cries are baffling. (Also: Fumes?) Glorious is clearly intended as a feminist rallying cry à la Little Mix and Beyoncé, but comes off more like a cringey musical number about female empowerment. The “oh na na” backing vocals and tribal drums are very Lion King, and there’s a chronic open goal: the chorus about being “glorious”, “victorious” is, unfortunately, extremely laborious.
The bad parts are thrown into sharp relief by Testament’s few moments of genuine light. A few songs ripple tantalisingly with the glimmering ease of All Saints’ 2000 hit Pure Shores, and its producer, William Orbit, pops up for a couple of tracks. After All is intimate and rueful, with the chorus equivalent of a window being opened on a boiling day – it’s a rare moment of genuine emotion. And compared to the overdone structures elsewhere, the vengeful electro-pop of Testament in Motion is enjoyably slippery. They are proof there’s potential here, but Testament is mostly weak Lemonade.
