The Versions

A consistently interesting set that reminds you that Neneh Cherry didn’t just come up with visionaries like The Slits and Massive Attack, but truly became one in her own right.

Full of baloney The Versions isn’t. But its muted—and sometimes rather predictable—approach only occasionally gets close to capturing the erratic wonder of Neneh Cherry in full flight.

While tracks like Woman are meant to be sombre (and ANOHNI is the perfect artist to deliver this), several of the featured artists have attempted to transpose Cherry’s tongue-in-cheek asides into sincere parts of the melody and in doing so have undercut the fun of the songs.

No one really shakes things up. Still, there are numerous moments of real beauty here.

You would struggle to describe The Versions as anything other than a mixed bag. The weird thing is that it somehow works as a tribute to Neneh Cherry regardless of the contributions’ quality: the good tracks emphasise what a fantastic songwriter she is, and the less successful ones make you feel her absence and underline her uniqueness as a performer.