Celeste Woman of Faces

Tracks: On With The Show; Keep Smiling; Woman Of Faces; Happening Again; Time Will Tell; People Always Change; Sometimes; Could Be Machine; ...This Is Who I Am
Label: Atlas Records

Cue the velvet curtains and dim the lights: Celeste has returned with an album that sounds as if it swanned in from a lost reel of classic cinema. Woman of Faces is drenched in retro glamour—all smoky brass, midnight keys, and melodies that swirl like perfume in an old theatre foyer. For an artist who’s been so closely associated with Bond-like torch songs, she leans into that reputation here with confidence, crafting a record that feels at once theatrical, intimate and unmistakably hers.

It’s been a long stretch since Not Your Muse crowned the charts and earned Mercury recognition, and in that time Celeste has weathered enough creative delays (and personal turbulence) to make most artists falter. Instead, the years seem to have distilled her work. The new album opens gently but with a clear statement of intent: On With the Show unfurls in a solitary waltz of piano and echo, the kind of track that feels like a curtain rising on a stage still heavy with heartbreak. There’s a wistfulness — even a wintry stillness — that nods to Hollywood’s golden-age orchestral sweep, a clear touchstone for Celeste’s sonic ambitions.

But the record refuses to sit in one emotional register. Across its run, Woman of Faces proves itself a slow-burning, meticulously arranged piece of work, each track crafted with a painterly awareness of texture and space. The piano fades to warm guitar on “Keep Smiling”; brass swells in the shadows on the title track; strings gather and recede like weather systems. Celeste’s voice, dusky and unmistakably direct, is the binding force — freed from the Billie Holiday and Amy Winehouse comparisons that shadowed her early career, she sings here with a calm self-possession that feels earned.

The album’s enigmatic centrepiece, Woman of Faces, is perhaps her most intriguing composition yet, a lyrical riddle that shifts between self-interrogation and storytelling. In an era where oversharing is a songwriting currency, Celeste’s careful ambiguity feels bold— and refreshing.

Not that she avoids experimentation. It could Be Machine arrives like a late-night voltage surge, breaking the album’s otherwise crepuscular mood with industrial pop edges and a Gaga-like snarl. It’s jarring by design — the sonic equivalent of a phone’s blue light cutting through a dark room — and it adds welcome contrast to the record’s emotional palette.

If some moments float rather than grab, that seems part of the album’s philosophy: Woman of Faces is less about hooks than atmosphere, less about declaring than revealing. It’s music for drawn curtains, low lamps, and quiet reckoning.

Celeste closes the album with a flourish: This Is Who I Am—a grand, sweeping final act that channels the spirit of the great pop vocalists of the ’60s and ’70s without ever feeling derivative. It’s an unabashed statement of selfhood, delivered with the kind of clarity that suggests she’s stepping firmly into a new chapter.

With Woman of Faces, Celeste proves that the wait was worth it. This is an album of depth, elegance, and dramatic poise—a second act that not only meets but also expands the promise of her debut. It’s a performance that lingers long after the lights go up.