Tough Love

Pensive, silken R&B. [24 Oct 2014, p.63]

Gorgeous minimalist songs are punctuated by Prince-like synths and Ware's impressive vocal range. [Nov 2014, p.102]

All in all, Ware has gone the correct route with Tough Love.

These radio-ready confections teem with smart hooks and fuller choruses.

Tough Love is a tour de force album, one that nails heartache with sophistication and class.

She imparts yearning with such controlled restraint and lightness of touch it’s sublime.

For the most part, it is an assured collection of songs that exudes the confidence of an artist at the peak of her powers.

Actually listen to Tough Love and you’ll realise that Ware has made a record that is totally ready for chart success, should her label promote it accordingly, but also deeper and more thoughtfully-considered than any British pop album that lingers in recent memory; the fact that it seems so reserved is nothing more than an indicator of Ware’s confidence in the potency of its sensuality.

A genuinely superior slice of small hours electro-pop.

It’s not an album that fights for your attention, but one that knows it doesn’t have to try.

It’s this confidence that really shines throughout the album. Ware’s vocals are at the forefront, no longer hidden amongst a cloud of heavy electronics.

Tough Love is an album that reveals itself gradually, reducing this ever-beguiling artist down to her essence, while offering ample opportunity for her to develop her technique.

Where Devotion contained only three or four songs with big, traditional choruses, Tough Love is built on them.

You get the sense that pretty much any style could be Ware’s if she commits to it, but for now it’s nice to hear her explore a level of sophistication as her star continues to rise.

For all its vulnerability, Tough Love is tenacious, too, brimming with R&B grooves and a whole lot of soul.

Twinkly epic 'Cruel' is especially outstanding, while collaborations with Dev Hynes (‘Want Your Feeling’) and Miguel (‘Kind Of… Sometimes… Maybe’) save the latter half from drifting too far into languid MOR ballad territory.

What we find with Tough Love is an album just as conceptually focused as Devotion, yet too willing to waste Ware’s sophisticated emotionality on tracks with no depth or purpose to them.

What she's lost in subtlety she's gained in star power, off the back of two years of touring and a slow-burning hit album.

Ware continues to express a multitude of emotions with superb elegance. The material, unfortunately, is on a lower plane.

It’s the most chart-friendly songs, such as the swaying Ed Sheeran co-write Say You Love Me--still whispery-smooth, but a bit more “there”--that immediately register; the rest of this intriguing album takes its time to blossom.

It's mainly successful: co-written with Ed Sheeran, new acoustic single Say You Love Me may ebe a relation of Extreme's More Than Words, but elsewhere stories are told more vividly, with non-showboating vocalist Ware infusing the songs with restrained emotion. [Nov 2014, p.114]

It is tempered and classic-sounding. But the sounds are as itchy and oppressive as they are tasteful.

Her off-kilter stance on traditional soul-pop helped her stand out from the crowd. Now, it's hard not to think she's content playing the part of another pretty, predictable voice.

Tough Love relies more on gravitas, allowing more space for overly serious numbers like the Emile Haynie-produced “Pieces”. Sometimes sweetness works better.