Scenery

For years, Emily King’s story was emblematic of New York City: The daughter of an accomplished jazz duo—singers Marion Cowings, who is black, and Kim Kalesti, who is Italian—King cut her teeth performing around the Lower East Side. As a teenager, she worked for Bad Boy Entertainment’s Chucky Thompson, who’d produced for Mary J. Blige and Notorious B.I.G., and earned a 2007 Grammy nomination for her first album, *East Side Story*. But the subsequent decade of self-releasing songs and touring took its toll, and King found herself craving solitude and a change of pace. In 2017, she uprooted for the Catskills, where she converted her cabin’s garage into a recording studio and began a new chapter. *Scenery*, her third album with producer Jeremy Most, is lucid and soulful, with assertive vocals, gospel harmonies, and nostalgic, driving percussion. It’s masterfully edited; songs like “Forgiveness” and “Teach You” breathe in all the right places, and King’s voice is always crystal clear. Her head seems clear, too. On the Tom Petty-inspired song “Go Back,” she waves goodbye to the New York rat race and embraces a new way of life. “I know there’s something waiting down this road ahead,” she sings. \"I’ll find it in the end.”

The New York singer-songwriter’s third album maps life’s changes to sleek, vibrant R&B that’s packed with 1980s soundtrack flourishes and big moments; it’s the perfect frame for her extraordinary voice.

Emily King's obstinate fortitude merits almost as much high regard as the music she makes with recording partner Jeremy Most.

Emily King is a known entity in the music scene — she signed her first major record deal way back in 2004 — but superstar success has eluded...

Pop-friendly soul can have a decidedly generic feel to it when done badly but for the most part here on her third full-length, Emily King traces the well-worn outlines of accessible R&B at the least adequately and, particularly in the early minutes of the