Review Summary: Gravity's holding me back.
Credit where credit is due: Harry Styles has completely shed his old identity, and that's a class act that not many bubblegum pop artists are capable of. After the frankly-inevitable split ("indefinite hiatus") of One Direction about five years ago - bands that essentially get signed up to ride a cashgrab wave of popularity don't last very long - the rest of Styles' comrades have been struggling to make an identity for themselves, struggling to create material that doesn't sound like One Direction leftover scraps. Harry Styles, however, has been awfully busy the last few years, rising out of the woodwork and making a name for himself as an artsy, theatrical, somewhat-androgynous crooner with a flair for the psychedelic.
Sign of the Times was, at the end of the day, a merely decent record, but
Sign of the Times was remarkable for the fact that Styles managed to craft a brand-new image for himself out of essentially nothing. The Harry Styles you see now is no longer the starry-eyed, innocent dreamboat that stole the hearts of teenage girls around the world, he is (for appearances' sake, at least) a bona-fide capital-A 'Artist' that demands to be taken seriously. And for that, Styles and his team deserve a hell of a lot of credit - he is, essentially, the only remnant of One Direction even worth paying attention to.
Bit of a shame, then, that Styles' albums seem doomed to never grow beyond a '3.5' average rating, and
Harry's House is no exception. To his credit,
Harry's House is a record that dips its feet into a lot of different pools: the surprisingly brisk 13-track setlist dabbles in funk, synthpop, acoustic ballads, and the usual psychedelic pop-rock that Styles has been pioneering for himself for the last few years. It even sounds legitimately artsy and exploratory at parts, and you have to admire that willingness to experiment.
The issue is that a lot of these dips into different genres are often held back by the restraints of
Harry's House being, at the end of the day, a label-scrutinized and committee-approved pop record that absolutely needs to sell well, so Styles' attempted eclecticism winds up feeling shallow in places. "Little Freak", for example, sounds pleasant enough, a low-key and plaintive ballad with slick acoustic arpeggios and hazy, submerged synth pads, but it sounds so much like the lovechild of (the far-less interesting) Lewis Capaldi and Olivia Rodrigo to the point where you can basically
hear the parts that were trimmed down and refined into being 'radio-ready' and 'accessible'. The groovy, bass-driven "Cinema" begs comparison to both Styles' own "Watermelon Sugar" and The Weeknd's "Can't Feel My Face", the darker tones of "Love Of My Life" are shockingly similar to Hozier's "Take Me To Church", and the swung, misty-eyed beat of "Keep Driving" feels like a hipsterish (but not too unusual) blend between Ben Folds and Snow Patrol, with a hint of Keane's "Somewhere Only We Know". These songs are pleasant and easy on the ears, but somewhat homogenized and sterile all the same, dipping their toes into different pools but never lingering in the water for too long lest they threaten to sink and become something altogether different (and altogether more interesting).
With all that in mind, there's some genuinely good and even great material to be found on this record. The terrific JT-meets-Bruno-Mars funk jam "Music For A Sushi Restaurant" is a strong, danceable opener, hitting you in the face with ebullient horn sections, an overblown drum kit, and ringing, falsetto-heavy vocal harmonies hanging high in the back. The vintage pianos, processed vocals, and sunny atmosphere of "Grapejuice" struts along with a classic, daydreamy Beatles-esque energy, the explosive rock finale of "Satellite" paints a stellar dichotomy to the synth-drenched, teary-eyed mumblings before it, "Late Night Talking" is a glossy disco track dominated by alien synths, chanking guitars, and these darling doo-wop backing vocals that cleverly emulate the sound of a brass section, and the faint, sleepy "As It Was" coasts by on an effervescent synthpop beat that sounds surprisingly vulnerable and soft-spoken for a cherry-picked lead single. Special mention has to go to the ballads "Boyfriends" and "Matilda" - "Boyfriends" is a sublime bit of minimalism, leaning on the back of a warm, drifting acoustic riff and the absolute best vocal performance on the entire record, and "Matilda" initially sounds like a cut off of the acoustic side of the Foo Fighters'
In Your Honor with its wistful, melancholic plucks and arpeggios before shifting into this utterly
gorgeous candlelit piano ballad at the end, Styles' vocals rising and rising into this million-dollar bridge dominated by teary-eyed harmonies so delicate and 'final'-sounding I'm stunned this wasn't the final track.
In summation,
Harry's House is honestly pretty good - there's some genuine gold to be found on here, and the highlights are more noteworthy and textured than the highlights on any of Styles' previous outings. The biggest issue with the album is a simple one, but one that sort of snakes its way through almost half of the record's entire track list - Styles' attempts at striking out on his own and expanding his horizons are held back by the album's overall desire to stick to the conventions of pop music and successful pop records. It's hard to tell how much of this is due to Styles' own lack of confidence and experience with more experimental songwriting, and how much of this is due to executive meddling and producer interference, but one thing is certain in spite of the album's shortcomings: Styles is improving, bit by bit. Each album is a little bit stronger than the last, and I half-expect his next outing might actually be something pretty special. But as it stands,
Harry's House is a decent, briskly-paced, flamboyant pop record - for what it is, it's pretty damn fine, and even at its worst,
Harry's House (and Styles as a whole) is still doing far more interesting and satisfying things than a lot of its' contemporaries.
