RAPID REVIEWS: WAJE’S WORDS AREN’T JUST ENOUGH

The Voice

 

Waje’s new album, Words Aren’t Just Enough, is a contender for the 2013 album of the year. At a time when artists are throwing everything into LPs in a bid to find out what sticks to the audience’s ears, she has made an album catering to her major strength—her big voice.

 

Everything on Words Aren’t Just Enough is in service of that voice so much it is delightful overkill. She is singing half the contemporary scene out of the park and breaking the hearts of the other half, one vocal manoeuvre after another.

 

The highs come early: by the third track, the mellow, unhurried, excellent Ijeoma, she has given more than double the price of admission. From that point onward, it becomes a case of managing a sweet tooth her music has spawned. She succeeds and delivers a comparable high on Black and White featuring Eva and Phyno on a production arrangement recalling Bez’s Super Sun remix and Eva’s own High.

The themes are mainly variations of love as she makes a strong case for falling in one kind of love or the other: marital, amatory, agape, narcissistic even—all the time proving that although words are hardly enough, sung in that voice of hers, a case just may be made for their sufficiency.