Nominated for the 2016 Brits Critics’ Choice and BBC Sound Of polls, Isobel Beardshaw – as Bizu was before launching her career, aged 16, in the group SoundGirl – is angling for the jazz/soul space inhabited by Amy Winehouse and Lianne La Havas. She is both helped and hindered by her unflagging sunniness: whether a song calls for the hiccupy sweetness that is her vocal calling card, or clawing intensity, it’s always underscored by her innate optimism. This makes for a very agreeable summer cocktail – aptly, it was originally scheduled for a June release – but comes up short if you prefer breeziness to be sometimes clouded by messier emotions. No matter the subject – from her preferred male body type in the acid-jazzy Skinny to agonising relationship uncertainty on the 60s-funk Gorgeous – Bizu’s tone is permanently fizzy. That ebullience goes to an interesting place on White Tiger’s Regina Spektorish quirkiness; but elsewhere, when Bizu sings the line “There’s glass on the kitchen floor”, echoing a line from Winehouse’s You Know I’m No Good, it just affirms that she’s no Winehouse.
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