HARRY STYLES – KISS ALL THE TIME. DISCO, OCCASIONALLY: REVIEW
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HARRY STYLES
Kiss All The Time. Disco, Occasionally (Sony)
TIME HAS TELESCOPED, it is true. It once took a century or two to get through the plague, social destruction as an empire collapsed on itself, and religious mysticism turning into fanaticism and futile but destructive wars, while these days we just call it the presidential cycle.
So I guess it is to be expected that what in 2022 looked like a golden age for boys doing pop has come and gone in the wink of an eye, a wave of a feather boa, a waggle of a narrow pair of hips. Maybe we could call it the timberlake cycle.
The first three Harry Styles’ albums – the self-titled in 2017, Fine Line in 2019 and Harry’s House in 2022 – showed a boy band alumni begin with confidence, grow some sophistication, and balance a craving for respectability with sufficient lightness to make him seem more nimble that needy, more fan than imitator.
Like the best of Robbie Williams’ records they were, and still are, high-concept pop albums from a marketing and musical machine about as subtle as a steamroller, but somehow not stinking of contrivance in their attention to detail, aka close study of each pop style assayed. They were, and still are, a lot of fun to listen to and come highly recommended ‘round these parts.
Kiss All The Time. Disco, Occasionally is no less finer points-focused, whether it be the stylistic moves, the sonic reference points or the presentation: note the specific punctuation in that title, and whatever message that may send; note also how a previous attraction to the 1970s (hello Fleetwood Mac) and then the 1980s (greetings to you synthesised glossiness) has been joined by a fondness for New York’s art disco outfit LCD Sound System.
Smart. Prepared. Delivered. Well, except for this small matter: Styles and co-writer/producer Kid Harpoon forgot to bring the one thing a pop album needs, the pop songs.
Melodies here are carefully measured, as if they were working on rations rather than being doled out easily. Hooks are noticeably mild rather than memorable. Rhythms are evident, their message simple, but the compulsion you’d want accompanying them is absent. The rolling mood piece, Aperture, comes closest to really nailing it, and us, either through its undertow electronic tug, the suggestion of urgency in the second half or just a touch of house piano. But that’s the opening track and nothing comes as close afterwards.
Pop and Dance No More affect the bass-forward, vocals-reaching LCD manner but not the insistence or that veneer of confident sleaziness to “adult-up” the dancefloor. The effect, especially in the latter song, is more Florida than New York, which is not bad but not exactly thrilling. American Girls offers a squelchy synth-bass and a kind of dreamy overlay but while it rolls through with requisite electronic sheen it never really pulls you in its wake. And The Waiting Game does cute and low impact bubbling over which Styles murmurs not particularly persuasively, while the romantic sway of Coming Up Roses, its pizzicato strings bringing the rhythm and his close-mic delivery bringing the personal, is quite nice but only quite nice, when something touching might have been possible.
If there was one thing its predecessors told us before we landed here it was that a Styles album, like a Justin Timberlake but quite unlike a Williams one, was not going to be elevated, or indeed rescued, by lyrics. What passed for moderate revelations and a touch of the risqué last time have been blanched that bit more and might now pass for generic boy band. Though even that might not excuse those in American Girls.
It’s all a bit underwhelming, like the attention has been there but the passion was parked elsewhere. It lacks innate energy or any kind of self-driven momentum. It lacks fun.
For whatever reason, he isn’t having anywhere near as much fun as before, and not surprisingly then, neither are we. Which is a shame for anyone who likes pop. And that should be all of us when the world is going to hell in an orange-hued, over-filled adult diaper.
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