Solange Knowles's self-penned blurb makes exhausting reading. At 22, she can point to parallel careers in singing, acting, songwriting and modelling for sister Beyoncé's clothing line. But when it comes to star quality, only one family member has it, and it's not Solange.
The long-delayed follow-up to her 2003 debut Solo Star, Sol-Angel is savvy R&B with a gloss you can check your reflection in, but it falls short of what she intended: to make the record Dusty Springfield or Minnie Riperton would have made, were they around in 2008. Busy production from Mark Ronson and Pharrell isn't helped by a lack of both memorable tunes and the steely spined ardour that makes Beyoncé so compelling. It's only on a pair of slowed-down, twitchy songs at the end, Cosmic Journey and I Decided, that Solange shows she doesn't always succumb to the urge to overload everything with brassy wailing.
