Surely, all the young dudes in boy bands believe in reincarnation. It’s part of the deal. You spend your adolescence touring the planet as a well-behaved multimillionaire, driven mad by teenage screams, counting the days until the band finally goes splat and you’re free to transform into your truer, more rebellious self. La vida loca awaits.
But few have taken advantage of this radical opportunity with the gusto of Harry Styles, who, after six years of service in that sentient Abercrombie & Fitch catalogue known as One Direction, has chosen to reintroduce himself to the world as a self-deprecating skeeze.
“Woke up alone in my hotel room/ Played with myself, where were you?” the 23 year old sings near the finale of his self-titled solo debut. “Fell back to sleep, I got drunk by noon/ I never felt less cool.” Obviously, Styles - singing about his most pathetic self in his most dignified voice - has never been more cool than he is in this moment, quietly spilling his guts on to the hotel carpet.
Countless boy-band graduates before him have signalled their entry to adulthood by trying to sound oversexed and overexposed, but Styles has jumped ahead past the vulnerability, all the way to the valley of humiliation. It doesn’t get more grown-up than that.
As for the rest of the album, it sounds mature enough to be eligible for AARP membership. Styles and his producers - including Jeff Bhasker, whose golden touch has expanded the fortunes of Bruno Mars, Lana Del Rey, Kanye West and Rihanna - seem deeply enamoured with the splendour of the 1970s, mixing the melodic stardust of David Bowie, Elton John and Paul McCartney’s Wings with a few dribbles from Pink Floyd’s lava lamp.
It feels more formal than grand, and because the soundscape is so well trodden, Styles never sounds anything less than comfortable. Even when he’s asking urgent questions from the top of his voice - “Why are we always stuck and running from the bullets?” on Sign of the Times - everything goes diffuse in a falsetto mist.
Of the 10 tracks here, there are two peculiarities, Kiwi and Only Angel, a pair of songs that flirt with the cheek and pomp of hair metal but remain too tasteful to generate any significant friction.
By the time you reach the end of this album, it will have felt like a nine-song walk-up to From the Dining Table, anyway - that perilous ballad about feeling worked up and ashamed in a lonely hotel room. It begins with just Styles and his acoustic guitar in isolation, and then an optimistic thought: “Maybe one day, you’ll call me and tell me that you’re sorry, too.”
That’s a cowardly way to apologise to someone, and Styles knows it. The strings vanish and he’s alone again with his guitar, his frustration, his humiliation, and the greatest song he’s ever sung.