REVIEW: ZZ Ward's Love and War (EP)

Rating:  | B-
ZZ Ward made a name for herself in 2012 with a blues and hip-hop influenced LP called Till the Casket Drops. For her upcoming sophomore album, the artist "wanted to make things more passionate, more intense" (Music Times). Love and War, a four-track EP, serves as an introduction to that "evolved" sound.

For all of its harmonica rifs and dance beats, however, this collection falls a little flat. The songs "Lonely" and "Marry Well" come closest to recapturing the magic of her debut, but still miss the mark. Although they share many of the same elements as earlier gems like "Put the Gun Down" and "Move Like U Stole It," those elements don't click together in quite the same way -- the hooks are less engaging, the blend of genres less smooth.

The upcoming album, which will be entitled This Means War, is said to be based on ZZ's continually warring emotions and insecurities, even following the success of her debut album and entry into a new relationship. As she told Music Times:

"When I went to write this EP Love & War and the new album. I realized I was in a different situation now. I was in a relationship and I wasn't in one before. I still had all of this attitude and these emotions fighting with each other. Writing the second album, this relationship I was in wasn't hiding those things. It wasn't fixing those things within myself. It was only shining a light on them even more. The idea of This Means War and the Love & War EP is the war within myself and the idea that now that I have love, there is still this war within myself."

This sounds like a potentially fruitful theme. It is not, however, a theme that binds the four songs on the EP together in any obvious way.

This is not to say that the release is a total miss. Whatever their deficiencies when compared to her prior work, the new songs seem ripe for niche radio play, as well as for commercials, TV and other media synchronization -- areas in which ZZ excelled last time around. It's important to remember, as well, that this EP functions essentially as a promo release, to keep fans engaged during the half-year wait for the new album in the spring of 2016. She may well be saving the good stuff for then.

Suggested Singles: "Lonely"

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