POP/ROCK
Harry Styles, "Harry's House" (Columbia)
On the third solo album from the colossally charismatic former One Direction singer, 28-year-old Styles often sings from a perspective that is a combination of a prematurely wise elder, a personal cheerleader and a pro bono therapist.
When Styles branched out on his own, his most successful songs paid more mature but still unselfish tribute to women. But this other-oriented perspective has also made Styles himself feel, on his records, like something of a cipher. This problem was less apparent on 2019's superior "Fine Line," which partially chronicled a breakup and allowed space for the singer to wallow, transgress and occasionally get a revealing jab in at his ex's new partner.
With its vivid sonic landscapes, "Harry's House" is certainly the most distinct-sounding album Styles has made. The album opens with the bright and playful "Music for a Sushi Restaurant." The dreamy "Daylight" has a psychedelic weightlessness while the highlight "Grapejuice" frames a spryly ascending melody with a kind of jaunty piano and compressed vocal effect. Styles' voice is sleek and nimble throughout.
There is something sky-like about the whole album, and its 41 minutes unfurl with an air of pleasantly stoned contentment, occasionally overcast by some gentle melancholy that passes like a fleeting cloud. Styles' current hit single "As It Was" is the closest he comes to sounding genuinely troubled. The wedding-band funk of "Daydreaming" and the lyrically inane "Cinema" feel comparatively frictionless, and display Styles' unfortunate tendency to write lyrics that feel more like precisely posed Instagram carousels than conjurings of specific emotional states.
Styles is such a magnetic onstage performer, provocative interview subject and fearlessly androgynous fashion plate that his records have come to feel like missed opportunities — the least personality-driven expressions of his otherwise compelling celebrity. "Harry's House" is a light, fun, summery pop record, but there is a gaping void as its center.
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