Paging 007. Celeste has just made a whole Bond movie soundtrack of an album – fully loaded with smoky, retro jazz melodrama – and there’s not another film out until 2028! Although, since the franchise’s big, female-sung belter-ballads have proved more durable than the spy flicks themselves, maybe the 31-year-old Londoner is right to crack on and drop Woman of Faces without any back-up from Mr Martini.
Before her captivating set at this summer’s Glastonbury, Celeste was at risk of being best known for her 2019 single “Strange”, along with Sky Sports’ favourite montage soundtrack, “Stop This Flame”, both from her first album Not Your Muse. Nearly five years have passed since Celeste released her chart-topping, Mercury-nominated debut and her standalone single, the Oscar-nominated “Hear My Voice”, which featured in Aaron Sorkin’s film The Trial of the Chicago 7. In recent interviews, she’s opened up about experiencing “depression and heartache” over the delays in getting this new record together. But there’s a collected confidence to the nine, mostly percussion-free tracks on Woman of Faces that allows her dusky, direct vocals to step out the shadow of those early Billie Holiday and Amy Winehouse comparisons and speak distinctly to the listener’s heart.
