![]() 6” could sit next to Vampire Weekend on any playlist. But the Sixties and Seventies signifiers sprinkled throughout the album - a little organ, some clavinet and even George Harrison specials like electric sitar and sarangi - are expertly Vitamixed into pop-rock smoothies you can dance to, like the strutting “Adore You” and soulful “Lights Up.”Īided by genre-fluid songwriters like Kid Harpoon, Jeff Bhasker, Greg Kurstin, and Amy Allen, Styles is also now mining some rich millennial veins as well. ![]() With short-story lyrics about a family man’s life of quiet desperation and a six-minute build to wailing guitar drama, “She” might be the closest thing here to a “ Sign of the Times“-style homage to Bowie and the Beatles. ![]() (Especially when Styles, an irresistible flirt of a singer, gets playful like he does on heartbreaker ballad “Cherry,” dragging out the word “haaaating” from “I’m hating it” like he’s repeating a favorite line from Clueless.) It’s also as much as fun as anyone short of Bruno Mars is having with a band these days. Like his brilliant uniform of flowing, high-waisted trousers and shagadelic chest-baring shirts - loud retro looks hot off the Gucci runway - it’s a streamlined, party-ready, primary-colors take on the enduring concept of the rock & roll starman. But it’s not him suddenly declaring, “OK, boomer,” either. Though Harry Styles Superstar would have been a gloriously mad album, Fine Line is not the magical mystery tour one might have assumed the breakout One Direction heartthrob set his sights on following his classic-rock-inspired debut, Harry Styles. ![]() Musing about “floating up and dreaming / Dropping into the deep end” over a feverish groove of congas, handclaps and Mellotron, Styles calls upon a gospel chorus to take him even higher: “Maaaaybe, we can find a place to feeeel good,” they thunder in full Seventies musical-theatre mode. But when “Treat People With Kindness” arrives, it trips balls. If you’re listening for evidence of the many psychedelic mushrooms Harry Styles says he ate during the recording of his outstanding second album, you will have to wait until Fine Line‘s second to last song for a dose. ![]()
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