Paging 007. Celeste has just made a whole Bond movie soundtrack of an album – fully loaded with smoky, retro jazz melodrama – and there’s not another film out until 2028! Although, since the franchise’s big, female-sung belter-ballads have proved more durable than the spy flicks themselves, maybe the 31-year-old Londoner is right to crack on and drop Woman of Faces without any back-up from Mr Martini.
Before her captivating set at this summer’s Glastonbury, Celeste was at risk of being best known for her 2019 single “Strange”, along with Sky Sports’ favourite montage soundtrack, “Stop This Flame”, both from her first album Not Your Muse. Nearly five years have passed since Celeste released her chart-topping, Mercury-nominated debut and her standalone single, the Oscar-nominated “Hear My Voice”, which featured in Aaron Sorkin’s film The Trial of the Chicago 7. In recent interviews, she’s opened up about experiencing “depression and heartache” over the delays in getting this new record together. But there’s a collected confidence to the nine, mostly percussion-free tracks on Woman of Faces that allows her dusky, direct vocals to step out the shadow of those early Billie Holiday and Amy Winehouse comparisons and speak distinctly to the listener’s heart.
This is an album that begins with an ending. “And so/ Got a feeling I should go…” are the words with which she breaks her silence over an echoey waltz backing from a solitary piano. Honestly, if a keyboard could be staring bleakly out of a window on a grey winter’s day, the one featured on “On with the Show” would be leaning its forehead against the glass. Strings swell the scene as the enormity of a breakup mounts. Celeste – who went through her own big breakup before writing – said she was aiming for the epic cinematic sound of golden age Hollywood composer Bernard Herrmann (who wrote the auteur scores for everything from Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane to Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver).
So if this record is sometimes a little short on hooky hummable tunes, it compensates with the luscious sophistication and subtle texture shifts of its arrangements. The cool ivories of the opener give way to warm acoustic guitar arpeggios on the moody “Keep Smiling” and rich brass of the title track. “Woman of Faces” is a moochy, meandering piano-backed enigma of a song. “Don’t be surprised when she hurts you in time/ When she spits on the rind of yesterday’s lies,” she croons. You find yourself asking if the singer is contemplating another – the other – woman? Or herself. In an age of such bluntly confessional songwriting, one in which we’re all still reeling from being invited right into Lily Allen’s marriage, its mystery is refreshing.
The sudden blast of industrial, Ga Ga-inspired grind of eighth track “Could Be Machine” comes as a shock. It’s a decent song: a good old ranty yowl against hours lost to our phones when we “could be laughing right now”. It also works as part of the breakup narrative (who doesn’t numb the pain with scrolling?). But it’s jarring if you’ve put the record on for its mellow, crepuscular tone. Otherwise, Woman of Faces is the ideal choice to accompany an evening of drawn curtains, cradled glass and the building of empowered solitude. Celeste also saves the best for last: “This Is Who I Am” is a pure, microphone-clutcher of a Shirley Bassey homage. Its raw, full-bodied declaration of selfhood sails in queenly fashion over a subtly orchestrated sea of bittersweet semitones and fateful percussion. Celeste sings like a woman striding in confident slow motion away from a massive explosion. Shaken, but determined to be heard.
