Album Review: Paloma Faith, The Glorification Of Sadness

Featuring a mighty array of collaborators, The Glorification Of Sadness – the sixth long player from the Stoke Newington star singer Paloma Faith – is a widescreen, bombastic, ferocious effort. Lead single ‘How You Leave a Man’, all epic orchestration and hair metal guitar shredding solos, provides indication enough that Faith is tooled up and ready for battle.

She has fair cause. After she split from her partner of nine years, paparazzi and Joe Public threw in their four and sixpence about stuff they obviously knew diddley squat about. Titles line up like howitzers – ‘Hate When You’re Happy’, ‘The Big Bang Ending’, and the superbly named ‘Eat Shit And Die’.

Produced by Hollywood film composer Martin Wave, with Paloma herself as billed as executive producer – tweaking mixes, orchestrating writing teams and co-curating the album’s visual world – the pair have thrown the entire kitchen sink at TGOS. The battalion shaping the album includes Chase & Status, Kojey Radical, Lapsley, MJ Cole and one Maverick Sabre. All of which adds the ambience of a film soundtrack, complete with the entr’acte of ‘Mirror To Mirror’; the spoken-word gospel of ‘There’s Nothing More Human Than Failure’;’ the modern R&B of ‘Bad Woman’; and the happy hardcore of ‘Cry On The Dance Floor’.

7/10