Spirit

With its refined beats, immaculate arrangements and intelligent melodies, Spirit confirms both Lewis's international ambitions and the likelihood that she'll pull them off.

The subtle flutter of her finest melismatics could give an open-minded person goose bumps. Her coarser melismatics, however, are the usual showoff BS and probably also a commercial prerequisite, like not having a harelip.

It's a highly polished, professional sounding debut, with Lewis hitting all the right notes even when she warbles up and down the scale.

Her debut, which has dominated the charts overseas, is polite to a fault. If Whitney'esque is what she aims for, Lewis hasn't quite found the the F-U-N in fundamentals. [June 2008, p.66]

Though the 21-year-old's faithful, capable rendition of 'The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face' proves that the timelessness of the song should remain unquestioned, the album's adult-skewed material sounds even more jarring next to two fresh new tracks, the bouncy and youthful 'Forgive Me' and urban club jam 'Misses Glass,' added for American consumption.

Beyond that lead single, produced by Ryan Tedder of OneRepublic, the results start to feel uneven.

The production is lush, the songs are well-written and Lewis can certainly sing. It’s just a boring record that hews too closely to the modern album template with a couple of hits and a bunch of filler.

Exactly zero songs on Spirit come close to matching 'Bleeding Love.' On the album, she fares best when not allowed to overindulge in her sterling voice as on the haunting electro kiss-off 'Take a Bow' and the svelte power ballad 'I Will Be,' co-written by Avril Lavigne.

Her lovelorn ballads achieve a dullness to which normally only Americans aspire. [14 Dec 2007, p.67]

Whatever personality Lewis has is smothered by an oppressive pre-ordained sense of direction: she sounds simply like another cog in an impressive, but, soulless machine.

Lewis's voice is impressively elastic throughout but lacks any grit or style.