Franco-Caribbean artist Adeline may have released her first EP, but she’s no newcomer. Her funk bass lays out the rhythms of warm soul-jazz tracks, and underlines a voice that masters the old-school codes of the genre. Already seen in concert alongside Anderson Paak and Cee Lo Green, she takes the limelight with this EP, which gets us on board from the first beats, followed by a bewitching “you make me wanna stay up all night”, something we would do gladly. The power and elegance of her voice makes you long to see her live, backed by choirs undulating from right to left, while snapping your fingers in the middle of the spotlit fog. The EP is really effective, as much through the quality of its production and the lady’s taste for rhymes, as for her danceable, unifying aspect. It places the listener between the frenzy of the beginning of the evening and the intoxicating atmosphere of the night, especially after midnight, while borrowing from French freshness and the New York dynamic in which the musician lives. It ends with a nice funk ballad covering the track “Just Another Day”, which becomes “Si c’est pour jamais”, honouring the French language and the sexy side of her alliterations. As a black woman of immigrant background, the artist is a militant musician, all the more committed to conveying a positive message. And if that message is a mix of nu-disco and soul, she might as well not go to bed, and trumpet it all day and night.
