Album: Jessie War, Devotion (PMR Records)

Is summer's meagre release slate a factor in the effusive praise afforded this south Londoner's debut?

Not that her marriage of 1980s soul and cavernous electronics is ever less than well-manicured. But the more you listen, the less the album reveals; her vocals fall between sultry and sterile, and you wish, to take two of her professed influences, that she was a little less Sade, and a little more Chaka Khan.