Rosie Lowe - YU

Pitchfork 71

The smoky-voiced R&B multi-instrumentalist charts the ups and downs of a relationship with the help of guests like Jay Electronica and Floating Points.

The Guardian 60

(Wolf Tone)

Rosie Lowe’s 2016 major label debut, Control, explored the need to retain – and occasionally, learn to relinquish – power, especially relating to a woman in the music industry. Three years and a switch from Polydor to Adele/Florence producer Paul Epworth’s indie label later, the 29-year-old Devon-born Londoner slightly changes tack. When YU– pronounced ‘You’ and also ‘Why You’ – investigates the same themes, it’s within a relationship. It’s an album about love: insecurities, desire, contentment and the shifting balance of power. Her vehicle, again, is smooth, sultry, minimalist, electronic soul and R&B, somewhere between James Blake and Sade or Minnie Ripperton. There’s a hushed stillness to the way Lowe’s words glide over the stripped-down, becalmed grooves, before gentle soul gives way to more uptempo beats and sentiments. With that template, it’s a varied mix.