record reviews

Pretty Yende

Album: “A Journey”

Grade: B

What’s not to love about Pretty Yende? Her voice is delightful, her personality sparkles and her story is inspiring.

Just 31, Yende has gone from life in a South African township to stardom on the world’s opera stages. Now her first album, titled “A Journey,” documents her impressive lyric abilities, her lustrous tone and especially her mastery of coloratura. She can soar to a high E natural without sounding strained.

The seven selections, mostly bel canto arias by Rossini, Donizetti or Bellini, reflect stages of her story, triumphs in vocal competitions or important debuts. But, there’s a slightly generic quality to her singing, a lack of interpretive depth beyond mastery of the notes.

She includes the “Flower Duet” from Delibes’ “Lakme,” with mezzo Kate Aldrich as partner. It’s by now part of Pretty Yende lore that her interest in opera was sparked by hearing the tune in a British Airways TV commercial when she was 16.

The most interesting choice in the album is the “Poison Aria” from Gounod’s “Romeo et Juliette,” which requires a heavier lyric voice than bel canto. Yende’s voice is surprisingly robust in the climaxes.

SEnD Mike Silverman, Associated Press

Liz Longley

Album: “Weightless”

Grade: A

Liz Longley opens her second album for a national label with “Swing,” a declaration of independence in which the singer expresses a desire to test limits: “I just wanna swing further than I’ve ever been, only to come back.” It sets the tone for a set that finds the Nashville-based singer navigating often rocky emotional terrain with the depth, unsparing honesty, and grace of a master singer-songwriter. Longley is as good here singing about cutting ties and moving on, as she does on “Weightless,” as she is confessing to dependency – “Be my oxygen,” she pleads on the album closer.

The music is just as assured and fully realized, a sturdily melodic pop-based sound. It adds up to an engrossing whole in which Longley engages the listener to - in a line from “Swing” - “be here in this moment.”

– Nick Cristiano, Philadelphia Inquirer

Clipping

Album: “Splendor and Misery”

Grade: B

If there were any question how Daveed Diggs’ success in Broadway’s biggest story in years, “Hamilton,” would affect his avant, little noise-rap trio, “Splendor and Misery’s” 90-second interlude, “Long Way Away,” answers it with a bit of a cappella gospel. Then “True Believer” chimes in with a jaunty, “Dixie”-style singsong. With far more drones than drums on hand, Clipping’s sophomore outing is a sci-fi concept opus fitting of both Diggs’ fussily intricate bars and his bandmates’ musique machinations.

“Splendor and Misery” is more evenhanded and listenable than 2014’s “Clipping,” but it still dodges hooks enough to make Death Grips comparatively Lennon/ McCartney.

— Dan Weiss, Philadelphia Inquirer