Mary’s back! Queen of the quivery vocal, doyenne of done-me-wrong R&B, teacher of lung-wobbling lessons in love. Strength of a Woman is her 13th studio album, following The London Sessions (2014), on which she showed how good her vocals sound atop British electronic beats. Here she finds a (mostly) sweet spot between contemporary production and her classic sombre-sassy style. If only she had skipped the sub-Beyoncé jam, the Get Lucky-style one and the Rihanna-ish trap track featuring meme makers DJ Khaled, Migos and Missy Elliott. Beyond those fairly obvious pop bids, the empowerment ballads are pleasingly understated: there are D’Angelo vibes on Set Me Free, while Love Yourself sounds like Golddigger-era Kanye West, and indeed features the rapper himself. Better, though, are the freshened-up callbacks to Dr Dre-era Mary, as on the Kaytranada-produced Telling the Truth and superb lip-curler Hello Father, which, like all the best things, is left until last.
