Now the proud owner of six Brits, three Grammys and seven UK Top 10 singles, it’s fair to say Harry Styles has elegantly sidestepped the potholes that pepper the route from ex-boyband member to solo superstar. His well-earned confidence means that rather than fill the gap between 2022’s Harry’s House and last week’s announcement of his fourth album – the confusingly-titled Kiss All the Time. Disco, Occasionally – with various one-off releases, spurious anniversary variants or curated social media moments, Styles basically disappeared. In fact, the only sliver of excitement for his fanbase to grab on to came last September when he ran the Berlin marathon in a very respectable 2hr 59min.
Having endured the music industry at the height of its #content-heavy obsession in One Direction, there’s something old-fashioned about Styles’ absence between album eras. That’s unlikely to be accidental: since launching his solo career with 2017’s muted, 1970s soft-rock-indebted self-titled debut, Styles has cast himself as a cross-generational throwback beamed into the present, albeit one sporting fashion choices that rile gender conformists. Each album has arrived with a list of influences more akin to the lineup on the Old Grey Whistle Test than the current TikTok algorithms, while 2019’s Fine Line, Styles told us, was crafted under the influence of those vintage psychedelics, magic mushrooms.
On the surface, Kiss All the Time. Disco, Occasionally, with its cover image of Styles sporting oversized 70s glasses under a suspended disco ball, seems to continue the theme. Even lead single Aperture’s length, 5min 11sec – long enough to trouble anyone whose attention span has been eroded by social media – feels out of step with modern pop’s brevity.
But things have changed. His last comeback single, As It Was, was tightly wound and metronomic, reflecting its nervy lyrics, but the dancefloor-leaning Aperture is much looser. Opening with a minimalist electronic pulse and pretty, oscillating riff, it takes its time to fully emerge from the nightclub smoke, Styles’ lightly filtered voice slurring lyrics about drinks going straight to his knees. What starts out as a skeletal, LCD Soundsystem-lite throb soon starts to build layers, but with nary a softly stroked guitar in sight. Instead, electronic textures bleed in from the song’s edges before a sunlit pre-chorus blossoms into the chorus itself – the chant of “We belong together”, a very Styles call for unity. Expect it to sound amazing ricocheting around a stadium this summer.
Musically, Styles is still tinkering in the past, only the references are a little more recent. Aperture has the feel of the early 2010s and bands such as Vampire Weekend, Yeasayer and MGMT, where electronic music mixed with elements of psych, prog and pop; it is also evocative of the 00s techno-pop released on Cologne’s Kompakt label. Lyrically, however, Styles plays it quite straight. Talking about the forthcoming album on Radio 2, he said he used his downtime to go out clubbing more, to be in a crowd rather than playing to one, and at times Aperture has a slight goes-to-Berlin-once feel; people are elevating, others are “going on clean”, light is being let in, and suddenly everyone around him is his best friend. But there’s also something endearing in that, too. By the song’s excellent bridge, as some lovely house-y pianos play out, Styles suddenly sounds a bit lost; “I wanna know what safe is” he sings, before adding, “I don’t know these spaces.”
Unsure whether it’s coming (up) or going (down), Aperture grapples for a happy medium and finds its own safe space. While it’s not quite daring enough to scare his fanbase, the shift in direction still feels bold for one of pop’s few good male stars. That confidence remains undented.
