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Soul singer can't stay unhappy for long on upbeat new album
Published on Sunday, Nov 25, 2007
SYSTEM
Seal
Warner Brothers
If It's in My Mind, It's on My Face, the first song on System, Seal's fifth album, starts out like a sequel to his lofty mid-1990s rock anthems like Kiss From a Rose. Misty, hymnlike chords waft around him, and U2 guitars ping as Seal vows, ''Wish I could take you to a better place.'' But then a drum-machine beat kicks in, signaling that on this album Seal is taking his aspirations to the dance floor — or back to the dance floor. After all, Seal started his career singing dance tracks before turning toward rock for his definitive mid-1990s hits.
For System, Seal chose the producer Stuart Price, also known as the club-music auteur Jacques Lu Cont and as Madonna's collaborator for her Confessions on a Dance Floor. Price's head-bobbing beats keep things smiley-faced whether Seal is proffering love and compassion, or bemoaning the way things fall apart. ''There's silence every day because there's no way I can save you,'' he sings in Dumb, amid hand claps and synthesizer blips.
He never stays unhappy for long. Seal is out to save or comfort everyone, including himself. With the grainy, gospelly sound of his voice, Seal sympathizes with unhappiness and uncertainty, and then wills himself and his listeners toward optimism. ''I want you to always feel you're amazing,'' he insists in his best life-counselor mode on the single Amazing.
He's still celebrating his marriage to the model Heidi Klum, who sings a duet with him on Wedding Day, while in Immaculate he extols their interracial union: ''feather-white skin and ebony.''
But Seal is better when he's ambivalent, suspended between misery and his mission of solace, as he is in Loaded, sketching an unresolved romance with anguished vocals over a pulsating beat. For most of System, the indefatigable drum thumps and whizzing keyboard tones prevent Seal from getting too vaporous, while all his yearning comes through.
— Jon Pareles
New York Times
SYSTEM
Seal
Warner Brothers
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