One of the most exciting sounds in pop right now is the melange of dance music, R’n’B and vocal pyrotechnics coming from young women in the UK Jessie Ware, AlunaGeorge and FKA Twigs all work in this captivating space, where bewitching vocals blend with avant-garde sonics and all stripes of danceable beatmaking.
Katy B might be the one to take it to the US pop charts. Her new album, Little Red, is a forceful and fully realised mission statement of contemporary English pop. Next Thing throbs with the energy of ‘90s house, but given a modern digital urgency. Crying for No Reason is the hit out of the gate, and an heir to the clubbing-through-tears redemption of Robyn’s Dancing on My Own.
She shouts out a fellow traveller on this path with Aaliyah, trading lines with Ware in homage to the late experimental R’n’B singer, and the album is back-to-front full of muscular club cuts with spooky moods and fiery vocal performances. Rarely does a single album capture so much of what’s right in a country’s current moment in pop music.
