Conversations With My Heart – E.J. (reviewed by Dave Franklin)

There are certain subjects that songwriters keep returning to, not because they have run out of things to say, but because some subjects are too big ever to exhaust. Love is probably the obvious example. Its capacity for joy, heartbreak, confusion, desire, devotion and general emotional chaos has fuelled enough songs to keep the world’s songwriters occupied for several more centuries yet.

For British-Nigerian artist, songwriter, and published author E.J., it is a subject she’s already explored across her debut Reminiscence and follow-up Love Letters. And if Conversations With My Heart follows similar themes, it is only because there is endless inspiration to be found in the affairs of the heart.

Some of the album’s songs have already been released, but if singles are where an artist can make a quick first impression, the album is where they make a more enduring one.

And whilst you might already be familiar with the delicate, dulcet soul-pop of the opening track, ‘Words Only You Can Hear’, the slightly more groove-driven seduction of ‘My Starlight’ and the timeless jazz-soul of ‘You Don’t Know Me’ – a song that occasionally brings to mind the likes of Whitney Houston, Mariah Carey and even Etta James – it is what lies between these engaging, more obvious calling cards that completes the picture.

Because an album can sometimes be a repository for an artist’s single-worthy songs, the best ones become bodies of work. They have an ebb and flow, moments of light and shade, and perhaps even the occasional surprise lurking around the corner. That is certainly true here.

Here, that means sultry, melancholic duets such as ‘Face You’, with its gently lilting, Latin-esque feel, and ‘Hit the Road’s rock-soul balladry, where distant brass seems to billow and bubble on the horizon as E.J. makes her feelings abundantly clear.

Then there is ‘Love Me Gently’, which slips into some late-night liquid-pop territory, all smooth surfaces and intimate atmospherics – music for the small hours. ‘Power of My Love’ takes things somewhere considerably more expansive: an almost anthemic song, with the arrangement switching between on and off, quiet and loud, as lovelorn violins swoon through while E.J. adds a lyrical declaration meant to be shouted from the rooftops. Love, not merely contemplated but announced in no uncertain terms.

Matters of the heart are complex, mutable, often conflicted, and it seems that here is an album which touches on so many of its facets; though, as I said, such is the broad spectrum of such emotive expression, this is, I suspect, by no means the end of the story.

And so Conversations With My Heart becomes more than its title might initially suggest. These aren’t simply songs about being in love. They are conversations with all the different voices that love brings with it – the hopeful one, the wounded one, the romantic one, the uncertain one and, occasionally, the one that wants to stand on a hill and tell the world exactly how it feels.

In the end, perhaps that is E.J.’s greatest strength here. She understands that there is no definitive song about love, only another way of asking the question.

Conversations With My Heart finds E.J. turning that question over once again, and finding plenty still worth saying. From intimate whispers to widescreen declarations, this is an album that understands the heart rarely speaks in a single voice – and makes a rather good soundtrack for the conversation.

Spotify