Harry Styles ‘Kiss All The Time. Disco, Occasionally’: Occasionally, Brilliant
Harry Styles releases ‘Kiss All The Time. Disco, Occasionally’ today. Image credit: Laura Jane Coulson
Styles doesn’t pull off all his genre spins, but when he does, it’s magic.
‘What you think? I don’t think’…‘This unpredictable fun is fun if you know how’
These lyrics best encapsulate the mantra of ‘Kiss All The Time. Disco, Occasionally.’ (KATTDO), released today via Erskine (Columbia Records). With help from producer Kid Harpoon, Harry Styles asks you to leave your logical brain at the door, and submit to an album that spans genres, broaches the silly and serious, and at times makes little sense at all.
The world’s most in-demand male pop star, recognising himself as ‘not even 33’, is exploring what it means to fall back in love with music, and we’re invited along for the journey… Not necessarily to understand it, though.
Read our full review of ‘Kiss All The Time. Disco, Occasionally’ below.
Harry Styles ‘Kiss All The Time. Disco, Occasionally’ album review. Image credit: Johnny Dufort
KATTDO: A Sensory Experience Designed For Sharing
I think I listened to this album ‘wrong’ the first time: sat at my desk, headphones on, trying to soak in as many details as possible. Much of it didn’t land with me. Then I played it through speakers while doing something else, and then in headphones again, watching the views from a train.
I’ve listened to it a few times now. What’s become clear is that ‘KATTDO’ is a body album. It’s not intended to be ‘soaked up’ on first listen, but to be steeped in. That makes sense – given its sensory title, which in itself is more a concept than a clear statement. I expect many of these songs will take a few days, if not weeks or months, to morph and find their place in the glitterball, digi-cam world built around KATTDO; partly because they’re songs that require experiences, they ask to be felt in the context of something. And so these communal spaces for listening parties, stadium residences, and pop-up shops have appeared – this is an album which does not want to be boxed into a bedroom.
This is true from opener ‘Aperture’, a proclamation of boundless unity. It builds with pace and intensity to its euphoric finale; a promise of pure hedonism for an inevitable summer of Styles. Next up, ‘American Girls’ has a beautifully immersive introduction, and all the initial ingredients to be a standout track. But the intimately captured suspension of ‘perfect timing’ and ‘perfect lighting’ fizzles out as the song progresses, getting stuck in a bridge that doesn’t take it anywhere – and the ending falls flat.
The middle portion of the album suffers the same fate, with three songs that plod at a heel-dragging pace, and are immediately forgettable. On loops 3 and 4 of KATTDO, it’s hard to resist the urge to skip them. ‘Taste Back’ sounds not too dissimilar from ‘Little Freak’ from Styles’ last record, though features what may be the album’s best line: ‘talk in tongues, no common sense’.
“‘Coming Up Roses’ sounds like two people holding hands in a snowglobe of chaos, watching the flakes fall from their own self-destructive motions. It’s a stunningly beautiful take on ‘us against the world’, lifting the most romantic arrangement into a world of hangovers, bad decisions and regret like a Pandora’s Box of classical music, though no less exquisite.”
It’s a surprise then that the album’s slowest song, ‘Coming Up Roses’ is its best. Beginning with plucked strings that sound straight out of a bridal entrance, Styles says hello to vulnerability, from a distance: ‘And now it appears that I'm feeling guilty and worried, dear’’.‘Coming Up Roses’ sounds like two people holding hands in a snowglobe of chaos, watching the flakes fall from their own self-destructive motions. It’s a stunningly beautiful take on ‘us against the world’, lifting the most romantic arrangement into a world of hangovers, bad decisions and regret, like a Pandora’s Box of classical music, though no less exquisite.
Back To The Disco: Styles Shows Off His Weird & Wild Side
With no shortage of eyebrow-raising lyrics, fourth track ‘Are You Listening Yet?’ is wonderfully strange. A ‘Seven Nation Army’ riff, jumbled word spill, autotune-experimenting, gospel grooving, clattering drum hybrid… it will get you dancing, even if you’re not sure what you’re exactly dancing to. Then it’s not till Track 9 where we return to the party, and the album curves steeply upwards in tempo, momentum and quality.
‘Pop’ sounds like later One Direction mixed with ‘Medicine’, one of Styles’ best (still unreleased) songs. Synthy, bouncy and funky, and not without suggestive lyrics that tread towards debaucherous fantasy, this is exactly Styles’ brand of irridescent glitter weird, and he’s nailed it. Lyrically, it’s the bolder continuation of ‘Cinema’, pumped with the freedom and energy that was largely contained in ‘Harry’s House’.
‘Dance No More’ is nothing but great fun; a pure funk soul bop that is crying out for crowd movement. If you weren’t sold on getting a ticket for Styles’ stadium shows before, you might change your mind after hearing these two back to back. After a brief interlude where we return to the introspective mind of one of the world’s most adored celebrities, KATTDO rounds off with ‘Carla’s Song’. Written about his friend hearing Simon & Garfunkel’s ‘Bridge Over Troubled Water’ for the first time, he described the experience as like watching someone ‘discover magic’.
It’s this magic he’s found glimmers of across his own record, recreated in moments of joy, play, and the fluttering heartbeat of the final track that pulses with excitement.
“Synthy, bouncy and funky, and not without suggestive lyrics that tread towards debaucherous fantasy, ‘Pop’ is exactly Styles’ brand of iridescent-glitter-weird, and he’s nailed it. Lyrically, it’s the bolder continuation of ‘Cinema’, pumped with the freedom and energy that was largely contained in ‘Harry’s House’.”
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KATTDO will undoubtedly be adored by fans, and has plenty of moments sure to soundtrack a British summer – for those who aren’t in the Wembley vicinity and will be hearing it across two weeks already. If Styles can pull off the spectacle that these tracks invite, those shows promise to be memorable beyond their record-breaking longevity too.
Will this album stand the test of time? We shall see…