Listening to Duffy it is fairly easy to notice that she has talent. Her voice tends to be strong and in tune, belted out and rising above the string composition and nineteen-something throwback numbers slammed onto her album. Talent isn’t the question. I honestly have little doubt that Duffy would own American Idol (heck, she owned the Welsh version Wawffactor). She can be marketed. The 6.5 million copies of her debut record Rockferry sold prove that without a doubt. However, regardless of her success, her talent and her marketability, she still seems to be standing there without a defined image. Listening to her albums, she comes off as little more than a sassy karaoke singer. She never manages to capture the larger than life spotlight that the Gagas, X-tinas and Winehouses of her genre need. 
Endlessly, Duffy’s sophomore album seems to reinforce this. The retro-styled R&B has its moments of momentum, but mostly fails to gather enough thrust to be deemed interesting. Sure, the album’s obvious single, “Well, Well, Well,” will probably manage to draw people to snag the album from the store shelves with a propaganda attack on MTV and radio, but as a whole, Duffy’s product falls short of album of the year material. To be quite honest, it doesn’t even rate on my chart as the best album released this week. With 6 fairly ignorable tracks on a 10 track album, it is hard to approve of this album not being trimmed down to an EP.
However, not all is lost on the album. The production of Endlessly, which was done by Albert Hammond is top notch. The strings are crisp, the vocals are bold and the rhythm section, made up of members of The Roots, is driving. Tech nerds night want to give the album at least one listen for these instances alone. Everyone else might consider downloading “What, What What” and “My Boy” from iTunes.
2 out of 5 stars
