***
While the new Amy Winehouse CD “doesn’t have the craven feel” of many posthumous releases, it also “doesn’t provide a road map” to the third album she might have recorded had she lived, said Allison Stewart in The Washington Post. “Instead, it’s a collection of odds and ends,” with certain tracks seemingly selected “more for pathos than art.” Some material is from recent sessions, but other songs date from further back, including a cover of “The Girl From Ipanema” that was recorded when Winehouse—who died this summer at age 27—was 18. The songs may not always be strong, but at least “the productions and performances are up to her high caliber,” said John Bush in AllMusic.com. Credit goes to Salaam Remi and Mark Ronson, who handle “virtually all of the production” and make what could’ve come off as a hodgepodge assortment sound “strikingly uniform.” Winehouse’s vocal work, too, is “just as strong” as anything released while she was still alive.
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