Down To Earth

She layers airy, tightly harmonized vocal hooks over sleek synths, strummy guitars, and booming hip-hop beats, and the songs broadcast their emotional content--anxiety, melancholy, resilience--with a straightforwardness you rarely hear outside children’s music. That simplicity doesn’t detract from the ample melodic and textural pleasures, but it does give Down to Earth a limited shelf life.

It’s every bit as uneven as that bracing debut.

Though it's utterly sumptuous, and occasionally sizzling, the album has been divested of the spook-pop quality that made the debut stand out, replacing it with excessive tastefulness.

Down to Earth's title depicts Jem as a grounded musician, but its wide-ranging sound suggests something different, as the singer has yet to find a style that fully suits her capabilities. Fortunately, her search for the perfect genre still yields some enjoyable songs, as shown by this album's handful of standout tracks.

The languid vocal delivery does little to dispel the Dido comparisions of old, the polite and impassionate tones irking the listener even in the smallest does. [Mar 2009, p.89]