A Woman in Love , the opening number, bounces along with an eager drumbeat and Armatrading s expressive guitar picking. Her singing is soulfully pleading, and the way she turns a phrase over the buoyant beat is characteristically heart-wrenching: And if I get emotional and restless / You re like a soothing ray of light / Bring me to my senses in a / Heartbeat darling / Hold me tender in the night . It s a promising start, but A Woman in Love ultimately loses points with the needless appearance of a synthesizer that sounds about as contemporary as I m Lucky (that s 1981 for Armatrading neophytes).
Despite the presence of blues guitar, A Woman in Love mildly annoys with its dated pop veneer, setting the track back a good 25 years. None of the remaining twelve tracks suffer such a time warp, but, for a blues album, there are some songs that don t quite fit in. Secular Songs and Baby Blue Eyes are fine compositions that brim with Armatrading s unique melodic and rhythmic styles.
Neither, however, is particularly blues-centric. The former owes more to gospel than anything else, while Baby Blue Eyes sounds like a left over from the acoustic-based Lover s Speak album. Bypassing the incongruity of these cuts to Into the Blues is a lot easier than enduring some of the fairly turgid straight-ahead blues tracks.
What might have been a fun studio jam became the disastrous Deep Down , which features Armatrading incessantly repeating the title 102 times over a cacophonous rhythm section. Even more boisterous is There Ain t a Girl Alive (Who Likes to Look in the Mirror Like You Do) , whose cheeky title promises more fun than it delivers (Miles Bould s drumming is partially to blame). To be fair, more tracks than not earn passing marks.
Into the Blues is right and tight. Armatrading conveys that her baby only digs blues (not rock and roll, hip-hop, or pop) in four hot minutes. The smoldering style on the title cut is emblematic of what this album should have been.
Shifting gears, the desolate atmosphere captured on Empty Highway slows the pace down to a hobble.
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