Buy Now
| Buy on |
|
- Critic score
- Publication
- By date
-
Oct 11, 2023The record is quite an accomplishment and an excellent vehicle for the singer’s estimable talents. It’s a low-key yet unequivocal triumph.
-
Sep 28, 2023This is thoughtful, nuanced R&B that demonstrates Jorja’s kaleidoscopic feel for her genre, incorporating everything from neo-soul on the brooding title track, to flirting with dancehall on ‘Feelings’.
-
Oct 6, 2023Compared to the debut, the songs are a little tighter in structure, communicate more, and bounce from style to style -- whereas Lost & Found presented an evolved, commercially minded brand of street soul -- with introspective R&B always somewhere in the mix.
-
Sep 29, 2023She questions, she purges, she excavates and embraces the thorny contradictions of her life. Smith continues to shirk commercial viability, stripping away sheen and artifice, presenting herself as dimensional; flawed, bruised, exposed, at times disbelieving, but ultimately worthy of love.
-
Sep 28, 2023With a voice that often sounds like it’s on the verge of tears, she brings flickers of vibrato, jazzy curlicues, grainy inflections and subtle pauses and accelerations to her phrasing. It’s not modesty at all — it’s precision, and it has been ever more sharply honed.
-
Sep 28, 2023There are 14 tracks all in all, together with a couple of skits. Yet Smith refuses to fall into this trap, by some smart sequencing of the tracks: with the ballads mostly gathered towards the end of the record, Falling Or Flying feels like a coherent album rather than a collection of tracks stringed together.
-
Sep 28, 2023From the mesmerising opener ‘Try Me’ to ‘Little Things’, a nod to UK funky that has potential to rival ‘On My Mind’ for her biggest dancefloor heater, ‘Falling or Flying’ reveals itself much like Solange’s 2019 album ‘When I Get Home’: an uncompromising and arresting treasure of a record.
-
Oct 2, 2023Smith’s voice is assured and grounded: She reaches far less frequently for belting high notes and runs than she did on Lost & Found, instead sitting back comfortably.
-
Oct 19, 2023Despite the somewhat lethargic back half, falling or flying ends on a high note thanks to a powerful set of closing tracks in “Backwards” and “What if my heart beats faster.”
-
Oct 5, 2023Whereas many of Lost & Found’s tracks felt stripped to their bare bones, most of the tracks here feel built from the ground up.
-
UncutNov 13, 2023Smith has skill and ambition galore, but too often settles for tasteful stupor. [Review of the Year 2023, p.32]
-
Sep 28, 2023falling or flying may fall a bit short of the expectations set by her debut, but it does fly in the face of what you'd expect of someone on their second outing as a solo artist. It's a solid effort despite some missteps — among the clutter is some of the best material of Smith's young career.
-
MojoSep 28, 2023Smith often finds herself stuck in a musical straitjacket of tired R&B tropes, rarely able to break out of a narrow comfort zone. [Nov 2023, p.88]