UK Release: 24 January 2011 / Label: XL / Tracklisting: 1. Rolling In The Deep; 2. Rumour Has It; 3. Turning Tables; 4. Don't You Remember; 5. Set Fire To The Rain; 6. He Won't Go; 7. Take It All; 8. I'll Be Waiting; 9. One and Only; 10. Lovesong; 11. Someone Like You

2008 was the year of the soulful female. Duffy sold albums by the fleet-load, Gabriella Cilmi became the undisputed airplay queen, and Amy Macdonald made her breakthrough from Radio 2 sweetheart to mainstream mega-seller. But fast-forward a couple of years, and where are they now? Duffy can’t get a major single in the Top 40, Cilmi’s seeing her electropop efforts slip by virtually unnoticed, and Macdonald is having far more success over in Germany.

But wait! There’s another! Back in ’08, Adele Atkins was the first ever Critics’ Choice BRIT Award recipient, and on the back of a couple of Grammy awards, an ‘X Factor’-endorsed Bob Dylan cover that’s still selling strongly after three years and, of course, a voice that puts most of her contemporaries to shame; she’s back for a long overdue sophomore album. In a word, it’s beautiful.

’21′ is a set of tracks that demonstrate an emotional maturity far beyond the Londoner’s years, with a voice capable of being both seismically powerful and affectingly vulnerable at the same time. And although there are middle-finger salutes to dickhead ex-boyfriends, the aces are the tracks that fondly celebrate something that was, for a while, quite special. ‘Don’t You Remember’ for one is a heartbreaking plea for a drifting lover to recollect the better days, and ‘I’ll Be Waiting’ is uplifting in its optimism (“I’ll be waiting when you’re ready to love me again”).

Elsewhere, six-minute epic ‘One and Only’ is a sweepingly powerful love song, ‘Set Fire To The Rain’ perfectly captures that feeling of realising the one you love has fucked it all up, and the triumphant lead single ‘Rolling In The Deep’ is a big, brave break-up anthem that, for all its non-commercial roots, could easily end up being one of the best singles of 2011.

But as outstanding as the first ten tracks are, they have nothing on the exceptional finale. On ‘Someone Like You’, Adele is backed by nothing more than a piano and sings one of the most heart-wrenching break-up ballads in recent memory, wishing her love all the best and declaring “never mind, I’ll find someone like you”. It’s a track that will be covered on many a future talent show, will be featured on many an emotional montage, and will leave listeners in relationships a tiny bit excited to break up and cry along.

Shunning the current craze of decorating everything with electro-pop flourishes and guest-rappers, production here is wisely kept relatively stripped-back, leaving that beautiful voice to do all the work and that incredible knack for penning an emotive pop song to shine through. ’19′ split critics down the middle, but make no mistake: ’21′ is genuinely amazing.