What charming fun: as if from backstage, with a 1950s microphone in her hand, Joy Crookes sings the first bars of Brave, the opener of her new album Juniper. And then? An arty synthetic explosion sounds and Crookes' voice is right in front of you: a few seconds of spoken vocals before the music starts again, but now wonderfully rich and close.

If you want to listen to Juniper, be prepared for a few surprises. Not that there are constant jokes hidden in the tracks. But the range of genres found in the almost 45 minutes of music is impressive: rap, funk, jazz, soul, blues – you name it, she does it. Not in their pure form, of course, but swirled together, mixed together, interwoven.

Juniper, also available as Juniper (Deluxe) with an additional song called Fade Your Heart, is the second LP by the British singer, whose mother is from Bangladesh and whose father is Irish. This in itself ensures a certain diversity of influences in her life, which Crookes also incorporates into her music. Seen in this light, Juniper is an entertaining album, which the tracks illustrate acoustically time and again.

Pass the Salt is a mixture of rap and soul, somewhat edgy in its performance, yet completely authentic and dynamically charged by the contrast between the vocals – Joy Crookes here, Vince Staples there with his driven spoken vocals. In contrast to this is Carmen, a laid-back slow-tempo number with piano, featuring Sir Elton John. And the next twist follows promptly, because Perfect Crime is essentially soul-based, but cannot hide its pop influences.

Mathematics, on the other hand, with its groovy old-time soul at its finest, illustrates why Joy Crookes is often compared to Amy Winehouse – although this time singer Karo raps a few bars. House With A Pool belongs in the classic ballad category, performed with heartbeat and flair, and is another strong contender for the Winehouse succession. That leaves seven tracks for surprises.

The recording quality also contributes to the entertaining character of the album. The spatiality is captivating even without reverb, the sound sources are clearly distributed, grouped and mixed, dense passages are wonderfully tidy, and the audiophile enjoyment of the tracks is a constant pleasure, because the frequencies are also very nicely mixed – in a British fair manner. It pushes in the bass, warms in the mids and tickles in the treble, always in a carefully balanced way, so that each piece can play out its character unclouded.

Juniper is a very beautiful album, a wonderful follow-up to Joy Crooke's debut Skin 2021, and shows the extent to which the now 27-year-old has developed: magnificent. (Thomas Semmler, HighResMac)