POP/ROCK
Ed Sheeran, "=" (Atlantic)
Since his 2011 debut, "+," the hugely popular Sheeran has presented himself proudly as a hopeless romantic. In some sense, his fourth solo studio album (pronounced "equals" ) has the potential to be the fullest realization of the Sheeran ethos yet — the first since his December 2018 marriage to his childhood friend Cherry Seaborn.
"I have grown up, I am a father now, everything has changed but I am still the same somehow," Sheeran sings on the opener, "Tides," in a flagrant display of telling rather than showing. Musically, though, "Tides" is one of the most effective songs on the album, a stomping, surging lite-rocker arranged around a neat formal trick.
More than any of his previous LPs, "=" finds Sheeran mining the slick, synthesized sounds of '80s pop. But the retro aesthetic is most indebted to an album that is only a year and a half old, the Weeknd's massively successful "After Hours." It's most apparent on Sheeran's current hit, "Bad Habits," a pulsating, strobe-lit lament.
"=" is the kindest, gentlest Sheeran album, which is something of a shame. Each of his previous records had at least one song that complicated his image as a heart-on-his-sleeve nice guy. The soulful grain that sometimes adds texture to his smooth croon is also seldom heard on this record. The driving conflict here rarely strays from or goes deeper than a familiar, repeatedly stressed mantra: Life comes at you fast, but it slows to the tempo of a wedding waltz when you're in love.
An Ed Sheeran album wouldn't be complete without a mawkish tear-jerker and here it's "Visiting Hours." As in: He wishes heaven had them. Sheeran follows that indulgent weepie with a literal lullaby, the lilting "Sandman."
The album's best song is also the one that seems destined to be his next you'll-hear-it-till-you're-sick-of-it smash: "Overpass Graffiti," a moody, synth-streaked '80s throwback. Ultimately, "=" neither adds to nor subtracts from the trusty formula for success that Sheeran long ago worked out. It is the sleek sound of stasis.
LINDSAY ZOLADZ, New York Times
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