Most people will know Jorja Smith either by voice, thanks to her sunny R&B vocals on Drake’s Get It Together, or by face, thanks to her many magazine covers, five-storey high billboard campaigns and fashion brand endorsements. Others in the music industry will know her as Bruno Mars’s tour support, and Kendrick Lamar’s co-writer on I Am from the Black Panther soundtrack. After a clutch of singles and a Brits critics’ choice award, this pop-R&B debut album is her proper introduction as a solo artist, working it all out in real time as we listen in.
The highlights include Wandering Romance, where, between bass stabs, she wholly exposes her desire and frustration. You can almost see her face writhe as she belts: “No one keeps me dirty like you do … so take it how you want it, take all my love.” The effect is rousing, to say the least.
The delicate yearning on February 3rd hears her begging someone to “lose themselves from playing games”, conjuring those raw moments of trying to make a lover commit. On Lifeboats (Freestyle) she ponders “so why are the richest in floats and all my brothers drowning?” over gentle piano lines and soft hums – she channels Estelle’s cockney conversation, but without quite matching her finesse. The album can sound laboured, and not just lyrically. You can feel her voice strain and contort even in the first few notes of the opening track, where she walks on the edge of the overly saccharine, only to eventually crash to a fall with Tomorrow (“Don’t you wonder why / I won’t say goodbye / I won’t even cry.”)
Lost & Found is a well-paced album full of gentle vocals, catchy pop hooks and a playful relationship with the pains of youth, love and insecurity. Smith’s voice moves between arrestingly husky and overly nasal, with plenty of room to develop, but the sparse and uninspiring production doesn’t save the songs from feeling forgettable at times. As far as the poetry of trying, failing and picking yourself up again goes, this has merit, but as for staking a claim as pop’s biggest new R&B talent, it doesn’t quite stand five stories tall.
