Songs Of Mass Destruction

She applies her ever-mesmerizing mix of vocal heat and instrumental chill to images of longing, falling, searching, raging, and despair on her deeply emotional and soul-stirring fourth solo album, Songs of Mass Destruction.

There's no getting around the overall thematic pall, but Lennox surrounds every message with such beauty that one remains convinced that it's all going to be OK.

Songs of Mass Destruction is a crop of solid, occasionally over-refined songs in which she consistently delivers lyrics with grand flourishes even as she lends them powerful intimacy.

Songs of Mass Destruction is a sterling, rock-solid, expert example.

Check out the dissonant 'Womankind' ("Wish I had a lover who could turn this squalor into wine"), while the show stopper is 'Sing'--a collaboration with 23 female superstars that is incandescent.

With her explosively satisfying fourth solo album, Annie Lennox delivers her best recording since her Eurythmics' heyday, eclipsing even 2003's marvelous "Bare."

Lennox has pop-rock maestro Glen Ballard, who marshals her voices into a cyber-soul chorale. The sleekness doesn't diminish the fervor or the fun.

While the aim is irreproachable, and Lennox's inimitable voice--all dark-chocolate rasp and throaty power--remains undiminished, listening to the album too frequently feels like eating your veggies. [12 Oct 2007, p.75]

The result is an album that captures the range of her styles, from the rhythmically charged pop of her Eurythmics days to the haunted, longing ballads of her solo career. If the two approaches don't always cohere, each is satisfying in its own right.

The music is dominated by the same pounding pop-disco beats and thick textures that have defined all her record. But now Lennox sounds like she's been rubbed raw by life. [Oct 2007, p.111]

Lennox’s glossy white-soul template does sound a bit dated but she's still impressive when she gets it right.

Mass Destruction is Lennox's first album largely recorded in the U.S. (Los Angeles and Miami, as opposed to just London), giving the songs a slightly less chilly quality and a bigger, more expansive sound, but it's still a disappointment in the same way the Eurythmics' rock-leaning "Be Yourself Tonight" likely was to fans of "Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)" and "Touch."

Songs of Mass Destruction is likely to resonate with those who recognize the unique quality of Lennox’s work and there is enough of high artistic value here to allow the album to serve as another guarantee of Lennox’s fine legacy, even if the spectacular musical moments are scattered around a bit more than on previous efforts.

She sings of global suffering, emotional loss and female power in a way that's occasionally overwrought--but always packs a punch. [Oct 2007, p.92]

The meeting of Lennox's queenly vocals and Ballard's power-MOR production is what America's "modern rock" radio stations have been waiting for, but the upshot is that Lennox comes out sounding dour and reproving.

While the veteran singer's heart is in the right place, she sabotages her messages via the spouting of generalisations and the use of abstract language, with typically grating, inelegant results. [Nov 2007, p.110]