Album reviews: Boy George & Culture Club – Life and NAO – Saturn

Culture Club's first record in almost 20 years arrives as a belated apology to fans while London-based singer-songwriter NAO returns with a futuristic release

Boy George & Culture Club – Life

★★★☆☆

Life, perhaps, could be more accurately titled "Reanimated". The first Culture Club album in nearly 20 years, after 1999’s Don’t Mind if I Do, comes years after the band’s latest reformation in 2014. In that year, both a new tour and album were announced, with the band recording 18 tracks for what was to be called Tribes. Not only did that album never materialise, but the tour was cancelled after frontman Boy George developed a serious throat condition, while the BBC documentary Boy George and Culture Club: Karma to Calamity uncovered tensions behind the scenes. It took the band until 2016 to admit that Tribes would never see the light of day. Life now arrives as a kind of belated apology.

Thankfully, Culture Club’s musical journey of late has been detached enough from the contemporary music scene that the album’s content doesn’t feel as if it’s missed the mark, or its time. In that sense, it’s a satisfying delivery for fans, though it may achieve little else. There are club scene tones present in the baseline to “God & Love” and “Resting B**** Face”, a calypso-inspired approach in “Human Zoo” (although it feels inauthentic), but Life is otherwise largely dominated by reggae and soul. There’s a spiritual drive to album, with opener “God & Love” sounding almost like it was sung from a pulpit, in lines like “my name is The Messenger”. George’s voice, naturally, has deepened, and the notes feel coarser with age, but that comes with a deeper sense of emotional angst, which lends itself to the moments here that sound almost like a prayer for salvation, backed by a gospel choir. Salvation may not be what Life brings, but acceptance will certainly be found among the band’s fans. Clarisse Loughrey

NAO – Saturn

★★★★☆

A monumental shift is supposed to occur in your late twenties, thanks to the astrological phenomenon that is the “Saturn return” (when the planet arrives back at the same place it was when you were born, after 29.5 years).

For London-based singer-songwriter NAO – real name Neo Jessica Joshua – that change takes place in the form of her second album. This is all about her reasserting and perhaps only just discovering her true identity.

Since her debut single – the AK Paul-featuring “So Good” – was released in 2014, NAO has hovered around a near-perfect brand of sultry, neo-soul-inflected R&B. Four years later, and she seems to have mastered it.

“Drive and Disconnect”, an album standout, is infectiously catchy, driven by an African rhythm and a male backing vocal that suddenly become overwhelmed by jazz piano, which settles down from its initial frenzy to leave the track on a gorgeously reflective note. “If You Ever”, which was co-produced/co-written by NAO’s frequent collaborator, 22-year-old wunderkind Mura Masa, is loaded with dramatic strings and a heady, driving beat. “Make It Out” is a celestial call-and-response style duet with SiR, during which their two vocals overlap and harmonise like waves on the sand.

Saturn is a work in perpetual orbit, which leads the listener through NAO’s personal journey over the past few years. It’s an album that feels grounded and also futuristic. By the end, you feel yourself returning to a familiar place, simultaneously knowing that things have changed on the way there. Roisin O'Connor