I've never been interested in listening to Harry Styles, as I was guided by the delusion that he was just another Shawn Mendes or Ed Sheeran acoustic act with a few good hits, and while there are definitely some similarities between Styles and his "contemporaries", this certainly feels more interesting, and certainly a bit better overall. The vocals are solid, I think Harry Styles has a nice voice that works great for the sort of semi-disco pop that he goes for, but it certainly isn't anything special in the grand scheme of pop, both in writing and general sound. The instrumentals are good as well, they aren't really the most innovative or even interesting, but they certainly work for the style of music that Harry goes for on this, and there are some really nice moments with the percussion and bass. The highlights were Music for a Sushi Restaurant, As It Was, and Cinema, while the lowlights were Little Freak, Matilda, and Boyfriends, which I think ruined the fun pace of the album without being good enough to warrant doing so. The album art is good, I like the strong beige color permeating throughout the cover, I don't like Harry on it, I think he could look more interesting and be doing something more interesting, but it works fine. Overall, definitely not bad, I appreciate the attempts at Synth Funk, but a lot of the album kind of falls flat compared to the highlights, and it generally felt like a mixed bag of enjoyable and average.
By: Dimdim23