Part of the enigmatic London collective SAULT, Heaven is the singer-songwriter’s third album is a balm of cool, dreamy reflections on faith, love and courage. The soul singer Cleo Sol is a big part of Sault. But compared with them, the enigmatic vocalist is – almost – an open book. We know what she looks like. We know she was born in London as Cleopatra Zvezdana Nikolic; her parents (Jamaican and Serbian-Spanish) are thought to have met in a jazz band. London-born singer performed sold-out shows at the Royal Albert Hall; for a singer without hits to her name, this was a monumental feat. Cleo’s affirming odes have chimed with an audience who’ve grown with her, bearing witness to a repertoire of soul-seasoned fusion – distinctly homegrown but with the kind of transatlantic appeal that made Sade a crossover success.
New album ‘Heaven’ is Cleo Sol’s third in under four years, and like previous LPs – ‘Rose In The Dark’ and ‘Mother’ – it dramatises the vicissitudes that comes with enduring love, fidelity, motherhood and the orbit of platonic relationships. ‘Heaven’ develops rather than radically departs from the muted palette of it’s predecessors, this time through the lens of an earned maturity. These are short stories with a heightened sense of spiritual self-work coursing through them. On the bass groove rhapsody ‘Self’, Cleo delivers prophetic notes, calling on a higher power in a moment of inner discord; the title track with it’s gospel phrasing is a reminder to oneself, and to other ground down beings, that salvation is found within – that “loving yourself is free”
