The set drew on all four of Styles’ solo albums, showcasing everything from the blissed-out pop of Adore You, to the windswept balladry of Sign of the Times.<\/p>\n
But there was a question mark hovering over his new material, which has not been met with the sort of universal acclaim the 33-year-old has come to expect.<\/p>\n
Kiss All The Time… was promoted as a dance record, inspired by Berlin’s club scene and transcendental moments watching bands like LCD Soundsystem. <\/p>\n
Instead, it delivered a watered-down facsimile of those sounds, that critics called “unremarkable, external<\/a>“, “obtuse, external<\/a>” and “lacking in depth, external<\/a>“.<\/p>\n On stage, however, the songs burst into life.<\/p>\n That was all down to Styles’ supple and powerful band. Swelling to 18 musicians at some points, they anchored the songs with heavy bass and pounding rhythms. The grooves finally grooved.<\/p>\n Opening track Are You Listening Yet rumbled along on an irresistible soca rhythm, while a sample of Underworld’s Born Slippy gave Taste Back a much-needed turbo boost.<\/p>\n Elsewhere, the recent single American Girls gained a long, trippy intro, with Styles messing around on an old analogue keyboard, tweaking low pass filters and playing squiggly synth noises.<\/p>\n It was as experimental as it was awesome – but large sections of the crowd did not really know what to make of it.<\/p>\n They were more enthused by Golden, leaping up and down until Wembley’s foundations shook. Later, the ebullient Treat People With Kindness saw a giant conga line snaking around the stadium.<\/p>\n Styles matched their enthusiasm – despite a nagging cough that sometimes left his voice with a new (and not unwelcome) raspiness.<\/p>\n His recent marathon training has paid dividends, allowing him to sprint circuits around the stage without losing his breath. <\/p>\n And while he was resolutely anti-choreography during his boyband days, he has clearly had some coaching in how to move.<\/p>\n There is nothing so gauche as a routine, mind you, but he dances with the oblivious cool of a best man at a wedding where everyone knows the bride prefers him to her new husband.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The set drew on all four of Styles’ solo albums, showcasing everything from the blissed-out pop of Adore…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":636015,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[96,59,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-636014","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-entertainment","tag-gb","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/636014","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=636014"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/636014\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/636015"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=636014"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=636014"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=636014"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}