Grade: B
In which the foppish Davy Jones figure from the manufactured band One Direction (Zayn Malik being Peter Tork; One Direction didn’t have a Mike Nesmith) sheds the soft-rock pop-lite that has served him so well and goes with what he fondly believes is challengingly funky EDM, a genre which I do not believe plays to his strengths. So what you get is lyrics as fabulously inane as on ‘Watermelon Sugar’ but very little of the pleasant tunes which accompanied that and his many other hits. There are some interesting rhythmic textures for sure, and a surfeit of old-skool playground synths. There is also a surfeit of repetition, a necessity for the oeuvre and a polite nod towards rap. The Harries – the name for the many millions who worship the dude – may be a little discomfited, but not too much so. It is a toe in the water rather than full immersion.
He has a cute voice that can carry a tune – a shame, then, that there are few of them on this album. ‘Coming Up Roses’ is a pretty ballad of the kind we might more usually associate with him, although the accompanying pedantic strings get on my nerves and ‘The Waiting Game’ has a sweet folkish lilt to it. Elsewhere, though, that voice is too often buried and blurred in the mix – on songs which only just about deserve that description. The exception, the one that works, is ‘American Girls’, which does drag you into its witless but catchy refrain.
The rest, based around slight melodic motifs, come and are gone without so much as grazing the memory. Hope it goes well for him – he seems a nice lad.
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