Album review: All I Need by Foxes is a well-crafted piece of commercial music

The British musician delivers breaking-up-is-never-easy songs wrapped up in an accessible EDM package.

All I Need by Foxes. Courtesy RCA Records

All I Need

Foxes

(RCA)

Three-and-a-half stars

All I Need, the latest from British singer-songwriter Foxes is a breaking-up-is- never-easy album wrapped up in a package of accessible EDM, garnished with a cluster of reflective ballads.

The album's lead single, Body Talk, sizzles with 1980s synths, while Better Love and Cruel both stomp along at a similar pace. If You Leave Me Now provides the album's standout moment and essentially opens up the lyrical theme that anchors the entire album.

Here you'll find dialled-down piano and strings and the singer's deceptively brittle voice delivering plaintive lyrics about hurtful separation. She rarely strays far from this formula, by turns delivering carefree playlist-friendly dance music and contrasting it with more burdened moments on Devil Side, Scar and the gospel-influenced On My Way.

Best known for her collaboration with Zedd on the single Clarity, Foxes has marshalled her creative partners to great effect on All I Need, working with a clutch of writers and producers – most notably Bastille's Dan Smith and Jesse Shatkin, who has also recently teamed up with One Direction and Sia – to assemble a well-crafted piece of commercial music.