Post by Admin on Nov 20, 2018 17:44:55 GMT
Don’t call it a comeback—this won’t be that. Mariah Carey’s 15th album, Caution, hasn’t spawned any bona fide hits (despite the release of four songs ahead of the album), but the good news is, she at last doesn’t seem particularly pressed. Instead of gunning for the kind of chart success that has defined much of her career, she’s crafted out a self-assured, idiosyncratic record of mostly midtempo, hard-knocking R&B.
Caution is a solid album, a supporting beam within Carey’s exemplary catalog. The album is neither an instant classic nor a mar on her legacy. Though more than four years have passed since her last album, 2014's excellent Me. I am Mariah...the Elusive Chanteuse, and though Carey has been working overtime lately on promoting Caution, the actual content is so low-key that the album feels less like an event than a mood.
But in a way, then, Caution is exactly the kind of album Mariah Carey should be making in 2018. Given the tremendous success and consistently displayed craft within the past 29 years of her career, Mariah Carey has nothing left to prove. She’s earned this one.
Caution splits the difference between current trends (alternately ambient and bleepy keyboards that 20 years ago would have sounded more at home on IDM albums, soothing snares whose staccato rolling mimic the sound of ratchets) and her career-long devotion to a lush, high-quality product. As has been the case since virtually her 1990 debut, if modern R&B is a Yamaha piano, what Carey gives you is Bösendorfer. There are pillows of backing vocals, melodies with contours like those of ornate vases, songs with real momentum and solid payoff by way of elaborate emotional crescendos.
Caution is a solid album, a supporting beam within Carey’s exemplary catalog. The album is neither an instant classic nor a mar on her legacy. Though more than four years have passed since her last album, 2014's excellent Me. I am Mariah...the Elusive Chanteuse, and though Carey has been working overtime lately on promoting Caution, the actual content is so low-key that the album feels less like an event than a mood.
But in a way, then, Caution is exactly the kind of album Mariah Carey should be making in 2018. Given the tremendous success and consistently displayed craft within the past 29 years of her career, Mariah Carey has nothing left to prove. She’s earned this one.
Caution splits the difference between current trends (alternately ambient and bleepy keyboards that 20 years ago would have sounded more at home on IDM albums, soothing snares whose staccato rolling mimic the sound of ratchets) and her career-long devotion to a lush, high-quality product. As has been the case since virtually her 1990 debut, if modern R&B is a Yamaha piano, what Carey gives you is Bösendorfer. There are pillows of backing vocals, melodies with contours like those of ornate vases, songs with real momentum and solid payoff by way of elaborate emotional crescendos.