Saturn – NAO Album Review

Track List

Another Lifetime
Make It Out Alive
If You Ever
When Saturn Rises
Saturn
Gabriel
Orbit
Love Supreme
Curiosity
Drive and Disconnect
Don’t Change
Yellow Of The Sun
A Life Like This

NAO’s first album, For All We Know, reached number 3 in the US charts and bagged the talented singer a Brit Award nomination last year for her efforts. With so much expectation and buzz surrounding the talented female singer, NAO knocks it out the park and delivers an excellent second album to quell the doubters. Saturn is a beautifully written, confidently produced piece of art, one that oozes charismatic charm throughout its 13 beautifully composed tracks.

Whether it be the collaborative melodic vocals of NAO and Kwabs in Saturn or the dreamily optimistic solo effort Orbit, every song radiates a specific emotional resonance that help every track work harmoniously together as an album while making each strong enough to stand tall on their own as single efforts.

There’s a strong thematic presence at work here, a consistent theme of space and hopeful optimism that runs heavily throughout the 45 minute album. The solid compositional work, with a heavy emphasis on echo-heavy bass and synths, work perfectly here and make every song a joy to behold. The lyrics are intimate, personal and perfectly balanced; a mix of powerful, long notes with vulnerable, softly spoken words run heavy throughout the 13 tracks.

While Saturn may be overshadowed by more prolific names in this genre that have released similar albums as of late (Jess Glynne and Ariana Grande for example) NAO’s Saturn is an album that glistens and shines as brightly as the night sky the R&B artist paints in her dreamy album. Ending on the slow tempoed A Life Like This, NAO bows out confidently, producing a stunning slice of R&B that will go down as one of the best albums in this genre this year.