When Harry Styles left the British boy band One Direction, he was eager to prove his musical ambition and historical knowledge. His debut single of 2017 was the brazenly huge Bowie / Queen-style ballad Sign of the Times. An artist in his position might seem insecure or overbearing, but Stiles relaxed with winning ease in his role as a megastar, flexible in terms of gender, a megastar with a new look, a rock and roll gentleman who can give up the guitar rank to soul to soft rock and convincingly wring out an invasion like “I know you’re scared because I’m so open.” He is Mick Jagger for our more enlightened age.
With his third album, Harry’s House, due out this Friday, he manages to make his music both elegant and sophisticated, but also warmer and more intimate – the smoothness of Steely Dan’s polished marble with the generosity of Al Green. or a recording of Yo La Tengo. Harry’s House is bright with synthesizers and horns, often imbued with slippery, sticky synth-pop and R&B. You’re almost looking forward to checking out the credits and finding Greg Villingen and Rod Temperton there with Stiles’ longtime songwriters Kid Harpoon and Tyler Johnson.
He begins with the splendor of the Music for a Sushi Restaurant’s evening rendezvous, the sensual scattering of princely enthusiasm as he sings about green eyes, fried rice, sweet ice cream and blue gum twisted around your tongue. “Late Night Talking” is an accurate study of the smoothness of the early eighties, with Stiles gently promising to “follow you everywhere / If it’s Hollywood or Bishop’sgate.”
Many young artists who experience the elegant sounds of the eighties tend to embark on a kind of pantomime of alienation from the New Wave with cocaine. Indeed, Stiles mentions “making cocaine in my kitchen” in the fresh synth-pop song “Daylight.” But the song is sweet, not as scary as mirror shades, with Stiles in a fog of reflection who thinks about cycling in New York and compares to a blue bird ready to fly wherever you are. In songs such as “Keep Driving” and “Grapejuice”, the ethereal, gorgeous groove frees up space for Styles to explore a sense of desire that is saturated with openness and vulnerability.
Stiles took the title of Harry’s House from a line in Johnny Mitchell’s 1975 album, The Hissing of Summer Lawns. He takes a break from the dance floor to leave his love for Laurel Canyon in ballads such as the lazy “Little Freak”, which reinforces the “delicate point of view” of his beloved, and “Matilda”, where he helps the protagonist to sort through ambivalence, which comes with self-entry into adulthood. In those moments, he’s almost like a lover and friend that Joni of Blue deserved but couldn’t get because he was in his seventies and people still didn’t know how not to be assholes.
Throughout the album, Stiles’ singing is as conversational as his lyrics, making romance feel like a reassuring, sometimes fragile dialogue between peers. It is logical that Harry’s House comes out just when the season of summer bars is in full swing. This is a record summer breeze for Santa Ana.
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