Open share drawer
Each Sunday, Pitchfork takes an in-depth look at a significant album from the past, and any record not in our archives is eligible. Today we revisit the British folk-rock singerâs 1976 album, a brilliant display of musicianship from a songwriter attuned to the mysteries of desire and heartbreak.
Joan Armatrading will render interior mysteries with such forthright clarity, attuned so sensitively to the rhythms of feeling, that she makes the most terrible depths of heartbreak seem, to start, bearable. And then sheâll make you smile. âI am not in love,â Armatrading began her exalted 1976 hit, âLove and Affection,â âBut Iâm open to persuasion.â Where in pop do openings get better? Armatrading spent the 1970s affirming her status as one of the finest singer-songwriters of her generation: a woman of fierce intelligence and self-effacing wit who never stopped reading your mind or keeping you guessing.