Lost & Found

It is a first album that sounds like it came from an artist who has been doing this for years and years. ... Lost & Found is a revelation.

With classically trained vocals, storytelling swagger and a knack for melodic invention, Lost & Found serves as both introduction and foundation. The debut offering is laden with contradictions: feels safe yet edgy, simple yet complex, ambitious yet relaxed.

On Lost & Found, Smith is defining her own destiny. In the process, she confirms that she is special and rare, an asker of impossible but necessary questions.

A powerful tool for repairing a broken heart and indicative of an even brighter future, Lost & Found is satisfying and promising at once.

The album favours a downtempo pace, and Smith’s superstar potential is apparent on close-to-final song Tomorrow. But it’s the mid-album entry The One, with its swirling string arrangements and ambiguous tension between defiant lyrics and aching delivery, that suggests Smith’s ascent is far from over.

Ebbing and flowing with daydreams and a glossy but gritty pulse, Lost & Found is quietly, confidently remarkable.

There’s a diversity of stylistic approach and yet a singularity of vision that few artists are able to combine so early on.

Massiveness should be assured. [Summer 2018, p.114]

Sometimes it is easy to forget that Lost & Found is Smith’s first LP. The sureness and creativity that exudes from each and every song disguises what some would call a lack of experience.

While Lost & Found doesn’t feel like Jorja Smith’s magnum opus, it’s a brilliant first draft.

As a whole, Lost & Found finds Jorja Smith making a name for herself with presence and poise. Throughout these 12 songs, she commands a mastery of various styles, with enough experiments to flesh out a varied, captivating album.

Smith curated these tracks to showcase her insecurities to fans that will relate to the transparency of her work. Lost & Found is a strong foundation for the up-and-coming Smith and her R&B fused experiences. The gushing warmth of her emotion resonates into a digestible, easy listening album.

At times, it's as if Smith's sheer vocal talent becomes a crutch that restrains her from treading into riskier musical terrain. A large part of the singer's allure derives from her vocal prowess, but she sacrifices invention here, letting the album fizzle out too quietly. Smith is at her best when she reinterprets classic R&B sounds and experiments with the color of her voice.

Lost & Found is a well-paced album full of gentle vocals, catchy pop hooks and a playful relationship with the pains of youth, love and insecurity. Smith’s voice moves between arrestingly husky and overly nasal, with plenty of room to develop, but the sparse and uninspiring production doesn’t save the songs from feeling forgettable at times.