Best Music of October, 2008: "Sol-Angel and the Hadley Street Dreams" by Solange

Why it's significant: Though you might expect the worst from an album by a celebrity sibling, Solange acquits herself here as, if not the most vocally gifted, at least the more interesting and fun of the Knowles sisters. This, like Estelle's Shine, is an excellent album-length pop/R&B affair that won't get the attention that it deserves for reasons that don't have much to do with the quality of the music.

There's a long history of family members of the famous being foisted upon us as pop stars. I will tell you this about Solange Knowles, sister of Beyoncé: she is no Frank Stallone. She is no Aaron Carter. She, certainly, is no Hayley Duff.

Solange has a unique vision and is a talented artist in her own right. Still, it would be hard to blame someone for not giving her a chance based on the evidence at hand. There is, of course, the less than stellar track record of family follow-ups to sibling star turns, but there is also a history of her dad/manager awkwardly shoehorning a not-quite-ready Solange into appearances as a qualification for a Destiny's Child performance or awards show bow. There's a chance you might have been sick of her before you even heard her sing.

Solange doesn't duck that criticism. Sol-Angel and the Hadley Street Dreams,a melange of throwback soul and futurist pop, kicks off with "God Given Name." Here, she directly addresses criticisms she knows will come, singing "I'm not her and never will be" over a slinky beat that sounds stripped from a blaxploitation flick set on Venus.

It's a good table-setter for an album that begins by borrowing sounds from the giants of '60s and '70s R&B (Gamble & Huff, Motown, Stax, Sly and the Family Stone) before ending up square in electropop country currently inhabited by artists like Imogen Heap and the Bird and the Bee.

The album's first single, "I Decided," is a bubbly, instantly endearing love declaration that sounds like it could be a cousin of Natalie Cole's classic "This Will Be (An Everlasting Love)."

From there, she moves from the cool, druggy, relaxed "Valentines Day" through "6 O'Clock Blues," which was co-written by soul revivalist Mark Ronson, R&B songwriting legend Lamont Dozier, and members of the Dap-Kings.

The heart of Sol-Angel has a warm, homey, familiar feel, but the album isn't entirely a love letter to her parents' vinyl collection. As someone who's professed a desire to "be like the black Bjork," she obviously spends at least a little time facing forward.

While her contemporaries all seem to be in love with the same generic, whooshing trance keyboards, Solange uses electronic textures of a different sort on the album's two epic closing tracks, "Cosmic Journey" and "This Bird." She ties the album together by including a bit of the album opener's spacey feel, but instead of sounding like "Float On" by the Floaters, these songs sound as if they could have been produced by Portishead or the Notwist.

This hard turn might be Solange's way of saying that some interesting music has been made since the '70s passed, or might just be her following her artistic whims. Either way, her ability to move from excellent, organic, sweet-sounding soul to a synth-heavy psychedelic space flight without missing a beat makes her intriguing and this album far better than what we've come to expect from someone who's main claim to fame is being so-and-so's sister. That shouldn't be her main claim to fame for much longer.

-- Jeff Reguilon