Amel Larrieux
Ice Cream Everyday
(Blisslife Records)

“Finding joy in my life everyday so I can be sane as a human, not just as an artist or as a mom of two teenage girls” is the metaphor behind Amel Larriuex’s newest album, Ice Cream Everyday. “As a person who’s running a business of my own and being creative and trying to be fit and healthy and sane, I have to do something for myself,” Amel said in a recent interview with Global Grind regarding the album’s title.

Mixing neo soul and electronic with a hint of hip-hop and R&B, Amel dances across genres oh-so comfortably. From its lead single, “Afraid,” down to “You Don’t See Me,” the former Groove Theory vocalist speaks on the initial feel of falling in love to the pain of unrequited love, respectively. Having released solo projects since 2000, starting with Infinite Possibilities and its only R&B hit, “Get Up,” to the indie-released Bravebird in 2004 with fan-fave “For Real” and Morning in 2006, Ice Cream Everyday’s 16-track set list is a lovely highway of songs about reflection, love, relationships and everything else that comes with a life well lived.

Recommended spins: “You Don’t See Me” “Berries and Cream,” “Ur the Shhh” and “Moment to Reflect.”