slice of lime

It is the first album for Harry Styles I have ever actively skipped a song on, which feels a bit like not hitting on my own wife. There is a blasphemy to the action that highlights just how much I wasn’t expecting to have to do it. I am committed to the artist on this, and do believe the former boy-band member deserves every drunken night in Berlin he can get. I welcome everything he brings to us from these adventures, but this one should’ve sat on the shelf a little longer. Perhaps if they weren’t dragging up fruit-based marketing schemes from the past this could’ve been cleaned up into something better.

Harry Styles doesn’t seem to know what to do with himself in this album, the music like a scattered, unfinished thought. It does seem to fit with the image of himself I see most often now, appearing now like a perpetual screenshot from glossy magazines, poised and trained. He tosses fruit in shiny, white kitchens like a Martha Stewart dream and dances around his scenic backyards. He gives glimpses of reality with exclusive interviews, making you feel like you’re in now, you are catching a peek behind the curtain to an artist who has continually set the pace for pop music. Then he charges a month’s rent for tickets in a city no where near you.

Are You Listening Yet? was my favorite as soon as it started playing, and I knew nothing could follow that would top it. It is the younger, hotter younger sister to Aperture. It would wear pointed sunglasses inside the club and order a gin and tonic. The guitar line in the middle of the song makes me want to spiral on a dance floor, makeup smudged. It is the hushed conversation of sexuality I was hoping would occur on KATTDO, whispered between us like were playing a game of sexual tension telephone. Are You Listening Yet? comes with a pair of kitten heels and breath spray.

Dance No More is a beautiful example of where I was expecting Styles to follow, and where the album hits its better points. Its a Post-Tame Impala, for Currents is a landmark in pop’s history, dreg of modern pop with his own dashes. Disco is layered on top like a sepia filter, the exploration of older genres through modern lenses a reflection of arts generation shift towards nostalgia. The filter lets Styles add his own personality to the exploration as well, moments of vocals or guitar lines poking through like fingerprint marks. Oh, that’s Harry Styles! It doesn’t hurt that its also an incredible song to dance to.

Then we have songs like Paint By Numbers, a soft acoustic guitar mash of confusion. It sits like something in an emotional animated movie and doesn’t fit in the queue alongside the others. The hesitance of songs like these hold the album back from being something punctual, and the disco keeps these moments from expanding into a ballad specter.

What the album got right will be on repeat heavily, don’t fret. Harry Styles has always known how to make a catchy hit, and this round of gems will be enjoyed with my head thrown back in a club. The album needs to come with a mini fog machine and a strobe light, to best fit the experience. The rest is a confused mess of acoustic and mangled keyboard melodies. It seems like he just regurgitated the same old marketing tactics and slapped them on some half finished concept. If the disco had been more than a little occasional if could’ve been a marker of the progress of modern pop. Instead we got some radio hits with some chew to them, and then whatever The Waiting Game is.

There is moments of good lyricism on self image and sexuality, but it doesn’t hold up under any weight. There doesn’t seem to be any central thread between the songs, not like in his previous album Fine Line, but rather a disjointed combination of emotions. I do wonder if his ability to have brilliant production and top notch influence was his floaties for this album, for it does feel like a throwaway emo remix of Owl City at times and like a Jersey beat at others.

Overall, KATTDO feels like a recycled mess of Harry Styles’ leftovers, the marketing regurgitated mimics of albums past and the creative decision like a shrugged conclusion. The exploration of synth and ambience fell flat on its face, because it wasn’t committed to it. This was propped up like another artistic statement from the star, something with intent, when the reality seems more like an everything but the kitchen sink album of back of the folder ideas.

Tracklist

Aperture ★
American Girls
Ready, Steady Go! ★
Are You Listening Yet? ★
Taste Back
The Waiting Game
Season 2 Weight Loss
Coming Up Roses
Pop ★
Dance No More ★
Paint By Numbers
Carla’s Song

★ – favorites