Adele: 25 (XL Recordings)

The numbers alone make the release of Adele Adkins's third album an event of real magnitude: lead single Hello has already topped the iTunes chart in over 100 countries, 25 is number one in over 90 on pre-orders alone and it's a safe bet it will eventually beat the 30 million sales notched up by its predecessor, 21.

A final fun fact: Hello has been Shazamed twice a second since it was released, though as the NME asked pointedly last week, “Really, who doesn't recognise that voice?”

As it was with her assault on the world's ears and playlists, so it is with the album itself. Hello opens 25, a piano-driven power ballad reprising the wistful conceit behind Tom Waits's tearjerker Martha – the ex-lover calling long distance because, you know, she was on his mind – though without the nostalgic, late night feel. Here the emotion is on full-beam, the voice on full throttle. That's because, you know, it's Adele.

Of course the danger for an artist lucky enough to be responsible for a song that genuinely moves people – in Adele's case it's Someone Like You, from 21 – is that they continually try to rewrite it. Hello has a strong flavour of it, as does Send My Love (To Your New Lover), though at least there's enough of a single-now-and-loving-it feel to its upbeat chorus to undercut the implied melancholy of love gone sour.

Remedy, a hymn to love's healing properties and the power of family, has as its musical engine 25's only other killer piano hook, a stately progression you can expect to hear on an advert or BBC “ident” before the year's out.

Even more personally specific is River Lea, a rare instance of biographical detail creeping into a song title (“When I was a child I grew up by the River Lea”). Here Adele invokes a little of Bobby Gentry's rootsy Southern Gothic and the production by Dangermouse, also the song's co-writer and pianist, gives the song a downtempo, almost ghostly feel (Gothic or not we're south of Luton, by the way, not Tallahatchie: the Lea rises in the Chilterns and runs into East London).

Million Years Ago is equally intimate, with the singer channelling Windmills Of Your Mind-era Dusty Springfield, another gutsy soul legend against whom – and this is becoming increasingly clear – she can more than hold her own. Finally, on closing track Sweetest Devotion, Adele reaches for the sublime - and almost touches it with a soulful four minute slice of hands-in-the-air euphoria, one of several songs showing a more expansive songwriting approach than we've seen to date.

The album was recorded and produced at studios in London, New York and Los Angeles and re-joining the singer on co-writing duties are Paul Epworth, whose previous credits include Rolling In The Deep, and Ryan Tedder (Rumour Has It). New boys include Greg Kustin, who has worked with Kelly Clarkson, Katy Perry and Ellie Goulding among others. He co-authored Hello.

Adele is actually 27 of course, not 25, though with the fate of Amy Winehouse and Janis Joplin in mind, she probably wanted to avoid that as a title. Still, her unique naming protocol continues, though if the creative pace slows any then albums four and five could be called 31 and 36, titles don't have quite the same youthful lustre. Then again, with a voice as timeless and rich as hers, does that really matter?

Not a bit. As a follow-up to an era-defining smash hit, Hello is out of the top drawer and as a follow-up to the best-selling album of the century so far, 25 is equally potent and a forceful addition to an increasingly impressive songbook.