Sweden’s solo females tend to be electro-pop ice maidens; newcomer Seinabo Sey, by contrast, offers up big-picture, transatlantic soul-pop with some dance moves thrown in. When Stockholm’s answer to Emeli Sandé is good, as on Hard Time, or the title track, she is up there with the money-makers, making punchy night music that sounds as persuasive on the Fifa 16 soundtrack as it does in the video, in which Sey and a friend dance privately around a city at dawn. She sounds convincingly weary on Sorry, a piano ballad robbed of its natural gravitas by synth strings. Other times, this debut tends towards the characterless, making all the right sounds (retro vocals, contemporary beats) but more often than not, choosing the path of least grit, least quirk, and least memorability.
