Neneh Cherry – Blank Project

In the early ‘10s, British singer, songwriter and producer Neneh Cherry returned from more than a decade-long hiatus, one earned after the global success of her now-classic first three talbums: her 1989 debut, Raw Like Sushi; its 1992 follow-up, Home Brew; and Man (1996). After releasing the collaborative The Cherry Thing with jazz trio The Thing in 2012 (Cherry is the daughter of Don Cherry), Cherry came back to the center stage with the stunning Blank Project, which was produced by Kieren Hebden, aka Four Tet. Fully committing to song-craft, her singing voice and the rap cadences of her youth, Cherry harnesses hard, driving Hebden-crafted tracks as nuanced and dynamic as anything in his rich discography. The title track is propelled by a pounding drum-and-tambourine rhythm and Cherry’s thrilling phrasing.  The meditative “422” feels like she and Hebden tapped the spirit of her father Don during his brilliant 1970s string of albums. In addition to family influence, she’s armed with a rich arsenal of weapons. This is a woman, after all, who got her start as the lead singer of Rip Rig + Panic and, in the early ‘90s, let Massive Attack scour and borrow from her vinyl collection for samples to create their trip hop classic, Blue Lines. All that experience and energy is evident on Blank Project. Bonus: The deluxe version is only available digitally, but is worth checking out, if only for Ricardo Villalobos and Max Loderbauer’s remix of “Everything.”