Review by: Alex Bettucchi &
Gloria Rossi - May 2019
As expected, Deeper lands on the music market on 6th April 2018 with earMUSIC label and it's composed of thirteen songs (twelve unreleased tracks and one cover).The simple and charming cover does not differ too much from the tradition of the singer and follows the graphic style already used for the album's advertising campaign. As already said, the production is by the Ian Devaney-Snowboy couple; the recordings have been performed in Rochdale, London and in many more locations in the USA. The tracklist starts with Everything, a song that has been revealed to the public as the first airplay single and that gives familiar sounds back to the fans. In fact, an attentive ear could find close affinities with the songs contained in 2001 Face Up, especially with Can't wait to and I've got something better. Twisted is one of the most ambitious pieces of the album, practically a mix of three different styles connected to each other by a rhythm section of excellent quality that is able to keep high attention even during not always catchy passages.
The intro of Desire suggests a classic ballad, but after half a minute an urgent rhythm worthy of the Coldcut sound in People hold on and This is the right time starts with a more modern and enveloping sound. The fourth track is Billionaire, the first official single: a predictable text that spins around the metaphor of a thousand false promises often made in love relationships. The piece does not come out rearranged thanks to a very orchestral arrangement where Stansfield uses the voice in an atypical, almost vibrated way, compensated by the wide use of reverberation in the production phase. With Coming up for air we return to the soft-soul atmospheres of the most classic Lisa-Style, reminding the Blue Zone world. The arrangement is fresh and it's easy to feel the percussions are directed by Snowboy.
Talking about Love of my life, let's remember that in some albums of Lisa there is at least one track where the bass, played in “slapping” style, gives it a sinister atmosphere, as it happened, for example, with Poison and Love can. This time the ambitions are stronger, the song is really accurate and full of contaminations even if it seems that the piece never completely evolves. Listening to the Never Ever vibraphone, one could think “Andry Morris is back!”, but it's not like that, even if this sound, more than any other, will make the historic Stansfield fans happy. There are all the ingredients: there is dance and falsetto choirs, there are the strings and the necessary 80's bass.
Hercules in an unusual rock song with western atmospheres, really far from the Stansfield soul style, but we have to remember the recent Picket Fence experiment that partly remembers it. Pressing guitars and vocalisms in abundance complete this experiment that reaches the podium of the most ambitious tracks and that will divide the opinions. The ninth track is Hole in my heart, maybe the only one really destined to remain anonymous, but not to the fans attached to another romantic and foregone ballad. Retro atmosphere and minimalist arrangement drive a trembling vocal part (once again it's not clear if due to a stylistic choice). Even Just can't help myself offers a Stansfield with a not usual intermittent voice; the arrangement seems a sort of accelerated military march , typical of the early 2000s in R&B. This time the vocal and instrumental mix does not sound very tuneful and the arrangement could result to be a little forced.
The title-track Deeper takes us back to a very favorable ground to Stanfield, maybe the most congenial. In this context, Lisa offers her best: pure white soul, a classic mid-tempo ballad accompanied by the strings and the bass that have made the history of the singer. The album arrives to the grand finale with Butterflies, pure funk in James Brown style, but with electronic percussion. However, there is a feeling of incompleteness with this passage: while it runs away in a fast and envolving way, care seems to be missing in the spaces without music.The album leaves us with the wonderful cover of Ghetto Heaven, the real pearl of this record. The song tells the difficult life of black people in the ghettos, dealing with marginalization and drug addiction; it was originally published by the Family Stand in 1989 with Chain album, but it reached the real success in 1990, when Nellee Hooper & Jazzy B from the Soul II Soul created a remix that transformed a hip hop track into a very appealing R&B one . Stansfield's work should be considered an evolution of this remix : soft atmospheres, strings, keyboards, trumpet, choirs and bass give the listener a truly precious moment of Deeper, where Lisa is really at ease.
Four years after Seven, Stansfield brings the production quality to an higher level with Deeper. The disc embraces every atmosphere explored by Lisa during her career, trying to contaminate them with a touch of modernity, for the joy of her fans, generally unwilling to the news and everything far from Soul. As often happened in the past, an external element (Snowboy) helps the two ex Blue Zone to come out from the little circle of their sounds and let's hope this choice to have a follow. However, there is the attempt to remain strongly attached to the traditional Soul world (with few exceptions) and this paradoxically represents the only small Achilles' heel of Deeper, became the obstacle to find the acute or the hit able to put the album in the collective imagination.
Note to all various editions
In Japan the album is released with an important difference: in addition to the classic CD there is a second disc with eight live songs from the previous Live in Manchester. Deeper Deluxe Edition is out on 26th October 2018: it's an expanded version with nothing really new, with a second CD included that presents a long serie of remixes and live tracks and a new version of There goes my heart, proposed as a sort of semi-unreleased track.
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Singles extracted from album
Videoclips
- Billionaire
- Never ever
For more information on the history of videoclips visit the appropriate section.
