Album Review: Aluna George, I Remember

Aluna Francis and George Reid were one of 2013’s more endearing odd couples, their mix of pop sass and dance-floor meticulousness setting them apart amid a deluge of identikit UK beat-wranglers.

But they fail to meaningfully advance their sound on a second record which, though spring-loaded with collaborators (vocalist Zhu, Chicago rhymer Dreezy), feels suffocatingly anonymous. Francis has spoken about wishing to invest her lyrics with greater meaning and has cited Otis Redding as an inspiration. The closest she gets to escaping chart-pop cliché is on ‘Mean What I Mean’, wherein she recounts an uneasy encounter that could “have easily escalated into sexual assault”.

If only the music was as powerful as her musings – but Reid instead settles for a grab-bag of grooves and squiggly flourishes, with tunes such as ‘My Blood’ and ‘I’m In Control’ coagulating into one personality-free mush. I Remember is, as fans would expect and demand, properly “banging” – it is also soulless and humdrum.