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In an saturated pop market, where artists feel pressured to maintain a constant presence and flow of what’s depressingly termed “product”, South London’s own singer-songwriter Joy Crookes’s journey has advanced in a unusual series of stops and starts.

Following the release of a number of extended plays, she ended 2019 as a hotly tipped act: appearances on a major TV show, shortlisted for the prestigious newcomer award, placed high in the influential music poll, and selected to support a global superstar on tour.

But the latter was canceled by Covid, and her major success was delayed for nearly two years: launched late in 2021, her first full-length Skin made the Top 5 and, with its standout single, produced one of those long-tail viral hits that achieves a strange ubiquity even without reaching the Top 30.

She began crafting a follow-up, then disappeared from view. This extended period that divide her debut from Juniper were at least partly taken up by a time when she was “quite unwell” and “emotionally fragile”.

An Introspective Record

It’s a period clearly influences the contents of Juniper: “I feel unwell, I’m so tired, I can’t go on like this,” she sings on opener Brave; “I’m deeply unhappy,” runs the blunt chorus of Mathematics, seemingly a heartache anthem that appears rooted by something noticeably darker than love troubles alone.

One might say that Juniper’s introspective tone has its trade-offs – there’s no room for the kind of sharp, social commentary about political divisions, gentrification and immigration that peppered Skin – but Crookes is an remarkably sharp lyricist who comes across as smart, streetwise and gobby regardless of the emotional challenges she’s describing.

Avoiding Platitudes

Additionally, she consistently avoids the typical positive affirmations about the kind of subjects Juniper addresses, from co-dependency to family legacy pain.

One poignant track, about toxic dynamics, and Carmen, about impossible ideals, are all the more powerful for their subtle handling and rejection of melodrama choosing instead wit.

The latter dispenses with easy answers about the need to love yourself or how everyone is beautiful, and instead ends unresolved, with Crookes still looking bitterly at its “attractive” main subject: “Why must I strive harder for just half of what you got?”

Innovative Sound

The music is likewise an impressively fresh and unique take on the familiar. Her tracks have big choruses and catchy tunes – strong enough, in the case of Carmen, that it isn’t overshadowed even when its backing track incorporating something as immediately recognisable as the staccato piano line from Elton John’s Bennie and the Jets.

You could broadly categorise their style as post-Amy Winehouse retro-soul: electric pianos and lush orchestration; rich, live-sounding bass and drums; the odd dusting of distortion on Crookes’s voice, which transition between smokily powerful and subtly swing-influenced to more conversational, rap-informed rhythms.

Atmospheric Production

It could easily seem ordinary, but it doesn’t, because it’s filtered through an appealingly gauzy filter. Synths, harp strings and organ glow and drift abstractly around the sound, the sonic version of catching something in the periphery.

She uses generous amounts of spacious reverb; everything has a dreamlike, nocturnal quality. Listening to the deep low-end of Perfect Crime, or Pass the Salt, propelled by a fantastic drum loop sourced from a French icon and including a brief but explosive guest verse from Vince Staples, you sense that Crookes has an abiding love for trip-hop in its earliest, innovative form.

Eclectic Influences

It joins Crookes’s admirably eclectic list of influences: it’s rare to find a lot of artists in 2025 name-checking reggae legends, the folk-punk pioneers and qawwali masters in conversations.

One Minor Stumble

There’s one stumble. A particular song feels jarringly perky given the atmospheric company it’s keeping, a state of affairs not improved by its melody, which has a distinct synth-pop vibe.

However, a single misstep is hardly significant given how powerful the majority of Juniper is, how definitively it showcases Crookes’s talent as a singer and composer.

Worth the Wait

There are some big names here – as well as Staples, Kano appears on Mathematics, while Sam Fender adds vocals to Somebody to You – but the main attraction never feels overshadowed or overpowered.

Crookes has expressed concern about the gap between her second album and her first: “Will people still care?” she wondered aloud recently. You can understand why, but Juniper proves worth anticipating.