Harry Styles album review: The funkiest existential crisis in pop

When Harry Styles wrapped up his Love On Tour shows in summer 2023, he'd been on the road for 22 months. Or was it 13 years?

The singer had really been on the go since One Direction were formed in 2010. He launched a solo career in 2017, releasing three albums in five years. The most recent, Harry's House, won album of the year at both the Grammys and the Brit Awards.

"It was time for me to stop for a bit and pay some attention to other parts of my life," he recently told The Times.

"I'd always thought, or hoped, that I was the kind of person who didn't need the dopamine hits that doing this job often gives you. But I hadn't actually removed myself from it and it's hard to eliminate the doubt that maybe if it all went away, I'd really miss it."

So, on the cusp of turning 30, he retreated to Italy, recalibrated his life and took up marathon running.

During that time, Styles said he needed to "fall in love with music all over again", embracing the experience of being a fan, from the other side of the stage.

"I think the inspiration from them came of, 'Oh, that's how I want to feel when I'm on stage'. And then that led to the kind of music I was making."

So how do those experiences inform his new album, Kiss All The Time, Disco Occasionally?

Well, let's get the obvious out of the way first. There's almost no kissing, and the disco is a million miles from the hedonistic gleam of Studio 54.

This is bass-heavy dance music, full of funky syncopation and skittering drums, often played by Tom Skinner of jazz band Sons Of Kemet.

LCD Soundsystem is an obvious reference, but there are elements of 1980s experimentalists like Tom Tom Club, Art of Noise and even Gang Of Four in the mix.

He's even been name-dropping experimental Manchester act Durutti Column, known more for instrumental guitar music than stadium-conquering chart hits. (This came as rather a surprise to Durutti Column frontman Vini Reilly, who responded: "I don't know who Harry Styles is, but I shall Google him.")

The muscular grooves are complicated by Styles' vocal delivery. His gauzy harmonies regularly come untethered from the beat, floating over the songs like dandelion seeds in the breeze.

It's an odd mismatch, fed by the star's lyrics, which find him in an unsettled state of mind.

Styles sings of relationships that are constantly off balance. He second guesses people's intentions, and his own motivations, desperately uncertain of where he stands.

"I'm holding out / Do you love me now? / Do you?" he pleads over an itchy drum pattern on The Waiting Game.

Even romantic ballad Coming Up Roses ends with a sense of unease.

"Does all of this seem to be bringing us closer / Or am I back-seating you your life / Judging while you drive?"

The existential crisis isn't restricted to his love life.

On the aptly-titled Pop, he rejects the "squeaky clean fantasy" of his One Direction days, with oblique lyrics that seem to address darker desires.

"I wanted to behave," he confesses, "but I know I'll do it again."

He returns to the theme on Paint By Numbers, a gently strummed acoustic number where Styles describes being "stuck" with an image that was imposed on him, leaving him "holding the weight of the American children whose hearts you break".

In other words, there's a lot going on. On his fourth album, Styles is clearly working through some major stuff.

And who can blame him? He's been in the spotlight for 16 years, and the tragic death of his ex-bandmate Liam Payne presumably forced him to confront some of the trickier aspects of that existence.

As such, there's little to compare with the straightforward joy of Watermelon Sugar, or the keening desire of As It Was - but Styles isn't stupid enough to alienate his fanbase entirely.

The slow acceleration of lead single Aperture emphasises Styles' message that enduring love is worth waiting for.

And the delightfully barmy Dance No More bounds along on an irresistible groove as the singer leads a chant of "respect your mother".

Elsewhere, though, Styles seems distant and disconnected. It's as though he's not reached a resolution to his long, dark teatime of the soul.

It's an interesting space for a stadium-conquering pop star to occupy, and all credit to him for being brave enough to dwell in limbo for the duration of an entire record.

As a portrait of an artist at a crossroads, it's compellingly knotty.