Jorja Smith has spent part of her discography searching for herself, perched in a middle ground between the classic soul and R&B, and the dance beats that have driven the UK scene over the past three decades. Her latest album to date, ‘falling or flying’, was even deliberately split into two halves to express that dichotomy. The third release, ‘What Are the Odds’, ultimately leans toward the dance floor, albeit with uneven results.
The English singer has drawn inspiration in this case almost exclusively from drum and bass, UK garage, and house music, with occasional nods to Afrobeat and trip-hop—rhythms that are well entrenched in British radio and playlists. It all feels so London that there is a track about London, featuring a sample and an intervention by Devlin, called ‘This City’.
The problem with ‘What Are the Odds’ is that it arrives at a moment when the scene has long been saturated with those rhythms. Co-producers like P2J fail to give these genres a fresh twist, making the album sound somewhat monotonous and flat in its progression, even as it presents pieces like ‘Pretend’ and ‘The Way It Was’. Above all, far from drawing you toward the dance floor, at times the songs sound too melancholic to lift you off the sofa.
Admittedly, ‘For Life’, with its trip-hop vibe, is dedicated to a friendship tested by addiction; the album seeks its depth by addressing issues such as living one’s life through fame (‘What Are the Odds’) or the search for one’s own self in our past self (‘Young Heart’). Yet it never reaches a level of drama that would justify nearly everything sounding so sorrowful.
In this context, and given that the record seemed to aim at immersing itself in some club atmosphere, the brighter and more positive tracks are the ones that work best. Because those are the ones that decisively achieve their aims. ‘Dancing’, which also overcomes the sense of monotony by adding a gentle guitar line, lives up to its name with an irresistible cascade of la-las. ‘The music feels like la-la, la-la / Makes us move like la-la, la-la’ is exactly the chorus we wanted from an album of this kind.
A very similar effect occurs on the romantic and rhythmic ‘Make It Your Home’, as does the sultry duet with ‘Wizkid’ titled ‘Alive’ or the melody of ‘I Lied, You Lied’. Yet the other major win in this bet on Jorja Smith’s hedonism is the fast-paced ‘What’s Done Is Done’. A powerhouse UK garage anthem, urgent and defiant, written with Maverick Sabre with the aim of leaving behind all those people who only know how to harass us. Yes, indeed!
