Kiss All the Time. Disco, Occasionally <\/p>\n
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Artist: Harry Styles<\/p>\n
Label: Columbia<\/p>\n
As befits a global star with infinite possibilities at his fingertips, Harry Styles<\/a> has been popping up in some of the world\u2019s top glamour spots. He ran a marathon in Berlin, hurried to St Peter\u2019s Square to witness the unveiling of the new pope and, a few months ago, rocked up at a Japanese restaurant in Naas \u2013 the biggest pop moment to hit north Co Kildare since Beyonc\u00e9 supposedly dashed into a local forecourt in search of a bag of Tayto before headlining Oxegen.<\/p>\n In addition to roving all over, the one-time One Direction mainstay has been looking ever further afield for inspiration. Kiss All the Time. Disco, Occasionally, his profoundly okayish fourth studio album, has been preceded by namechecks for the Gen X disco punks LCD Soundsystem<\/a> and the top Manc miserabilist Vini Reilly, aka The Durutti Column<\/a> \u2013 best known for furnishing the heartbreakingly beautiful opening guitar line to Morrissey\u2019s 1988 song Suedehead.<\/p>\n He has also lifted a trick or three from David Bowie<\/a> by upping sticks to Berlin to record the new LP (with his regular collaborator Kid Harpoon). Going to Berlin has been voguish among artists looking to shake things up since Bowie went to the frontline of the cold war in 1977 to record a trio of albums. Alas, Kiss All the Time. Disco, Occasionally is very much David Bowie\u2019s Lodger in this equation: it is well intentioned but with a hollow place where its soul should be, a riot of style that suffers from a lack of substance.<\/p>\n You have to credit Styles with convincing the world that he\u2019s a Serious Artist \u2013 even when his music fails to live up to that idea. Judging, for example, by the reaction to Harry\u2019s House, his 2022 album, one could easily have mistaken Styles for the second coming of Prince<\/a> rather than a one-man Coldplay<\/a>. <\/p>\n That\u2019s no shade on Coldplay, and there\u2019s nothing at all wrong with being the solo equivalent of Chris Martin<\/a> with better hair and a wonkier faux-American accent, but it is striking how much more seriously everyone takes Styles.<\/p>\n That is surely down to his remarkable stage presence, which was on full display at the Brit Awards at the weekend, when he performed Aperture, his new album\u2019s minimalist lead single and opening track, as if he were Bowie negotiating side one of Low when, in fact, the choreography was more suggestive of a sort of Teletubbies-go-goth.<\/p>\n In addition to being its strongest track, Aperture sets the tone for the LP, which lifts the bloke-crying-at-the-disco template of LCD Soundsystem and re-ups it into playlist-friendly pop. Here and elsewhere Styles has to be credited for his ambition \u2013 he\u2019s genuinely trying to push forward creatively \u2013 even if the results often end up more honourable pastiche than profound artistic statement.<\/p>\n He borrows some of the melancholic musings of the cyberpunk pianist James Blake<\/a> on American Girls, a gauzy synth number that culminates in an annoyingly vacuous chorus (\u201cMy friends are in love with American girls\u201d). The clock is wound even further back on the muscular electronica of Ready, Steady, Go!, which lands like Styles\u2019 tribute to the much-maligned electroclash movement of the early 2000s. <\/p>\n Who knew he had a special place in his heart for Miss Kittin & the Hacker and TokTok vs Soffy O \u2013 yet here is incontrovertible evidence.<\/p>\n [\u00a0Harry Styles proves the art of a great album title is not deadOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n Given the soft treatment Styles has received from critics, he\u2019s the last person who should have a chip on his shoulder about his reviews. Yet there\u2019s a whiff of vinegar to the hard-hitting disco onslaught Are You Listening Yet?, which feels like a better-made version of Dizzy, Olly Alexander<\/a>\u2019s UK Eurovision entry; the words of Styles\u2019 title are his song\u2019s accusatory hook.<\/p>\n