Olivia Dean ‘The Art of Loving’ review: The powerful sound of Britain’s latest star
Love in all its conflicted forms is explored on Olivia Dean's brilliant second record.
In her recent interview with Rolling Stone UK about her second album, Olivia Dean paraphrased bell hooks’ book All About Love. “For some reason, it’s seen as this mystical, untouchable thing that we’re all supposed to just have a go at and figure out,” Dean said. “bell hooks is like, imagine if we had a class in primary school that was, like, emotional studies? So that we could teach each other a bit of etiquette, and how to fill each other with care?”
On The Art of Loving, Dean interrogates her own experiences and feelings of love, why she loves who she does and in the way she does. Through her impeccable, sugary voice and instrumentation that places her somewhere between neo-soul star and old-style jazz singer, she presents something close to that 101 of love she believes should be taught in schools.
Across the new album, love can be all butterflies and giddiness (the superb and infectious chart hit ‘Nice to Each Other’), an unstoppable force that simply just happens to you (‘So Easy (To Fall in Love)’) and love for yourself with no one else considered (‘Baby Steps’).
These sometimes-conflicting feelings are transmitted on an album that sonically swerves from breezy, upbeat pop songs to moody ballads, sublime soul music and back again. It’s Dean’s superb voice that keeps it all together though, as well as her commitment to uncovering new ground both personally and musically.
“I would never sit here and proclaim to be like the Oracle, or the wise owl of love,” Dean added in that same interview, but in sharing what she has learned – warts and all – on this special second album, she starts to decode the most consistently mystifying thing about being alive, becoming a modern British star in the process.