Cleo Sol kick started her music career early, from the age of sixteen she was writing, honing her craft in front of showcase and talent spotting audiences as well as posting her demo tracks on the internet. She had a drive and a sharp vision for where she was headed, even adopting the name Sol, albeit as a nod to the Spanish of her mother’s side of the family, offered a clue as to the sound that is the heartbeat of her music. Her first steps though were with Dance and Rap artists like Davinche and Tinie Tempah, who featured Cleo on tracks thus ushering her into collaboration situations and developing her style. Nothing that happened back then though gave much of a hint that a stunning, heavy hitting, Soul opera such as this LP, ‘Mother,’ would land further down the line. Talk about fully realizing an artist’s potential, this album is a monster of a statement. A modern Soul masterpiece that references many classic retro tropes, Donny Hathaway piano balladry, Aretha Franklin testimony and Gospel and yet it does not play like the repro work of a vintage obsessive for one second; no, this album sounds like it was made and absolutely belongs in 2021, a record for today.

As an artist Cleo is a brilliant fusion of the multicultural musical melting pot she grew up around in Ladbroke Grove. So much was written over the last five years about the London Jazz scene that it is easy to overlook that London is the epicenter of all music fusions, there is not one sound that defines the city. Cleo had genuinely eclectic records around her as a child thanks to her parents tastes in Soul, Reggae, Latin and Jazz; add to that her own affection for the Pop sounds around the Millennium and you have an idea where this young girl, with a karaoke machine to sing to her family, was heading musically. But then that in itself is maybe not unlike hundreds of other London kids with a taste for performing, perhaps the thing that pushes Cleo ahead of the pack is that ear for music she undoubtedly demonstrates on ‘Mother.’ A gift that as a youngster steered her towards a deep and fundamentally inspiring affection for Stevie Wonder’s ‘Don’t You Worry ‘Bout A Thing,’ an appreciation revealing a maturity to her musical brain highlighting why an album length musical statement such as this was a likely part of her arsenal.

It is no exaggeration to say that if Stevie Wonder himself had released this album in the 21^st century, critics would have been lining up to praise the LP as an astounding return to the rich vein of form he enjoyed in his early seventies’ heyday. Do I detect a nod to ‘He’s Misstra Know It All’ in the opening riff to ‘Music’? Well, if I do it is only a launchpad from which Cleo dives deep into her own wonderous world. It is not simply that ‘Mother’ maintains a thread throughout twelve strong tracks, or that there is pure soul in Cleo’s singing; the genius is in the tiny details weaved into this tapestry. The baby noises buried in the backdrop of ‘We Need You’ and the way that tune can melt through your skin like the golden dawn of your life, then judder your head with a brief bass led interval. The music flows track to track and the shifts in tempo sail naturally. But they are very real changes, the contrasts exist in each song. Listen to ‘23’, a tune with a real bass driven bounce and a breezy lightness in tone, but then the swirling voices in that chorus are singing “you nearly broke me down”. In nearly eight minutes, ‘Build Me Up’ progresses from tender reflection, gospel style elevation and vulnerable exaltation before literally speeding up as a deep bass groove leads us back to the sunshine, magical stuff. This album is an essential slice of young and modern Soul music; a raw yet gorgeous meditation on relationships, life and motherhood delivered straight from the heart of an artist with music in her DNA. I cannot overstate how great this is.

Get a vinyl pressing of this album here: https://www.discogs.com/release/20965663-Cleo-Sol-Mother