Album: Clare Maguire, Light After Dark (Polydor)

With recent guest slots on The Streets and Chase & Status's albums following her Top 5 spot on the BBC Sound Of 2011 poll, there's a carefully-cultivated air of destiny about Maguire, which the alliance with hot producer Fraser T Smith (Tinchy, Adele, Cee Lo) is doubtless intended to cement.

But impressive as she is in small doses, over the course of an album her tremulous, stentorian con-tralto becomes hectoring, like Annie Lennox with a cob on. It's a cartoon of emotion: even when whispering, there's a stage intimacy about her delivery; and at full blast, she has the emotive subtlety of a foghorn, though that may be to surmount the barrage of thundering tom-toms and pounding pianos with which she's been saddled. It's a shame: a more restrained approach might expose her sensitivities.

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