Kesha is back with a brand new album – but does she win over the critics with her latest release?
The Guardian: *** “Rainbow is both stranger and more normal than you expect; uneven – does Kesha really rhyme “highway” with “Hyundai”? – but likable.”
Variety: “The moment for some kind of personal revelation is nigh, but all these pop-psych clichés leave you feeling you know less about the real Kesha than you did coming in.”
Vulture.com: “Rainbow is a ray of hope and solidarity, and it stays coolly upbeat and confidently shuffling through genres.”
Pop Sugar.com: “With Rainbow, the talented songwriter has possibly delivered the album of her career with tracks that are vulnerable, honest, cathartic, and yes, total bangers.”
All Music: **** “Sometimes she’ll slide into cliché, usually by recycling therapy-speak, but how she pairs these credos with veiled confessions is as striking and moving as her party songs are weird and funny. By slyly alternating between these two extremes throughout Rainbow, Kesha winds up with a comeback that’s fully realized emotionally and musically.”
NME: **** “Californian pop hero Kesha returns with a defiant country and garage rock-tinged triumph.”
Paste Magazine: ” Instead of dwelling on what isn’t said on the record, she chooses to use her experiences to find the strength to move on. And so we get the most authentic Kesha album yet, and it’s a triumph.”
Vanity Fair: “This is an unapologetically open and honest Kesha we have never heard before—her voice is still recognizable but not as poppy and more focused with a message she wants her audience to hear loud and clear.”
Metro.co.uk: “Kesha’s album is a powerful, empowering, feminist, uplifting and absolutely beautiful.”
Rolling Stone: **** ” Across the board, she achieves a careful balance of her diverse musical selves: The gospel-tinged “Praying” takes the high road by wishing the best to the people who have hurt her, and “Woman” is a blissfully irreverent, proudly self-sufficient retro-soul shouter backed by Brooklyn funk crew the Dap-Kings.”
The Independent: **** “The result is a revelation. Where previous albums had been bland landfill electro-pop rendered even more indistinguishable through her heavily autotuned vocals, Rainbow offers a range of approaches, from pop and R&B to country and funk, applied to material that brings greater depth to her characteristic sassy attitude.”
Evening Standard: **** “The self-empowerment speak does become a little grating at times (see Learn to Let Go), but the stylistic range is impressive, from thrash punk to retro soul — and few would begrudge her the success.”
The Times: **** “she has come back with an album that is far better than anything she has done previously.”
Rainbow is available to buy and download through Amazon now.