Music > Album Reviews

Mabel - High Expectations

02/08/19

Mabel flew onto everyone’s radars with her successful single Finders Keepers with Kojo Funds back in 2017, and she has been patiently at work building up to her first full length album. Plenty of great singles playing with the pop formula, such as My Lover with Not3s and Cigarette with RAYE and Stefflon Don, fuelled much anticipation for this, but I can’t help but be let down by High Expectations. It does do some things well – particularly the lead singles from earlier this year. Don’t Call Me Up is one of my favourite pop songs this year, with a real intensity in its build-ups to the hook, providing a feisty breakup song – Bad Behaviour and Mad Love are also enjoyable. OK (Anxiety Anthem) is an important track, reflecting on the current atmosphere surrounding mental health, with Mabel being an encouraging and comforting voice. Outside of those four tracks, there isn’t much to separate the rest. The subject matter rarely changes, and the tracks morph into each other thanks to an overly consistent sound that the album carries.

The beat choices are rather uninspired and have that distinct current pop sound with little plink plonks of xylophones, rattles of hi-hats and deep bass thuds. With pretty much every track having a different producer you would think this would be more varied – names like Snakehips, MNEK and Dre Skull are from all kinds of backgrounds, yet it is all very much the same. Mabel has remarkable talent, and her voice is absolutely fantastic, but it just makes me wish she pushed herself and changed up the formula at times. The album goes nowhere intriguing or different - Mabel fits in her lane so well that I’m worried she will fade into the mass of similar artists. This is an incredibly safe debut album which is by no means a bad thing, rather it just makes it not particularly worth revisiting outside a handful of tracks.

4/10