The problem with Alicia Keys -all her work is she is unbelievably boring.. Her tempo is always the same mid-period whomp, her tone a cool beingness which fails to capture my imagination. Live she is all but unwatchable and that’s for a woman we can all agree to be absolutely lovely.
Elemnts is thirteen tracks of serious self-examination but unlike an alnum it at lest peripeharlly resembles, Lauryn Hills Miseducation it cuts off identification between artist and listenable. For instruction, the piano introduction “Wait Til You See My Smile” , is so subdued as to vanish while you’re listening to it and though the drums are so slow despite their thump they come as tom toms at a half beat behind the song.
Just like everything here, Just like “Empire State Of Mind” which you think Alicia’s “Emire State Of Mind Part II” which you might believe she’d nail down shut if she wanted to reclaim it fom Jay-Z and instead is a slow listless drag.
The best song here “Try Sleeping With a Broken Heart” has a somber solument beat and while it is sexy, it is sexy in a POST-Coital, post-romance way. here theme? Sure, but this theme drags on for an hour.