Album reviews: Harry Styles | HELP(2) | Bonnie 'Prince' Billy

Harry Styles: Kiss All the Time. Disco, Occasionally (Erskine/Columbia) ★★

Various Artists: HELP(2) (War Child Records) ★★★★

Bonnie “Prince” Billy: We Are Together Again (Domino) ★★★★

The thumping global success of his third album, Harry’s House, has given Harry Styles the latitude to take his career where he wants to - and where he wants to go ranges from a record-breaking 12 nights at Wembley Stadium to the kudos of curating the Southbank Centre’s annual Meltdown Festival.

The much anticipated and abstrusely titled Kiss All the Time. Disco, Occasionally puts more distance between Styles and his boy band roots although he can’t quite kick a couple of those blah ballads. Elsewhere, he cites the influence of Radiohead, LCD Soundsystem and ambient electronica artists Floating Points and Jamie XX in creating this tasteful, trendy but underwhelming suite of pulsing electro pop tunes fashioned with Harry’s House producer Kid Harpoon.

READ MORE: Lily Allen, Glasgow review: 'doesn't mince her lyrics'

Current single Aperture is a low-key introduction but builds to a gentle clubbing ecstasy. He plays it cool and steady on American Girls, a straight pop hook encased in slick mid-paced synth dressing. Ready, Steady, Go! partners a pliable bassline with autotune vocal for another slow build and Are You Listening Yet? reaches for a tribal electro feel.

Season 2 Weight Loss places drumming to the fore, with analogue synths darting in and out around mantra vocals and yet it feels like the big catchy hook is always round the next corner. The ingredients are there but Styles cannot make any of it add up to an arresting track. At least he saves his best shot for a song called Pop.

Thirty one years on from The Help Album, released to raise funds for the War Child charity during the Balkans conflict, the never more timely follow-up arrives into a world where an estimated one in five children are affected by conflict. Like its predecessor, HELP(2) aims to give charity albums a good name with a superb line-up of artists offering originals and covers, from Arctic Monkeys’ seductive Opening Night through to Olivia Rodrigo’s tender rendition of The Magnetic Fields’ witty and poignant The Book of Love.

READ MORE: CMAT, Glasgow review: 'huge fun backed by serious musical chops'

Damon Albarn teams up with Kae Tempest and Fontaines DC frontman Grian Chatten for the soothing shuffle of Flags, while Fontaines themselves cover Sinead O’Connor’s Black Boys on Mopeds with respect, rising anger, stormy guitars and dramatic strings. Beth Gibbons and Arooj Aftab are respectively tremulous and intoxicating on covers of Sunday Morning and Lilac Wine. Most surprising of all, Depeche Mode deliver an industrial electro version of Buffy Sainte-Marie’s protest classic Universal Soldier.

The high pop drama of The Last Dinner Party’s Let’s Do It Again! contrasts with the fragile ache of Big Thief’s Relive, Redie, Ezra Collective and Greentea Peng offer the cleansing reggae plea of Helicopters and Pulp sound fired up on the New York punk jabber of Begging For Change. Best of all, Young Fathers bring a blistering punk soul to Don’t Fight the Young.

Old folk soul Bonnie “Prince” Billy showcases the power in delicacy and understatement on We Are Together Again. His earlier albums were devastating in their austerity; now his music is lighter, more inviting. The album title references the community of musicians from his native Louisville who populate its pretty and plaintive songs, ranging from the soft mariachi brass and cheeky tuba of Vietnam Sunshine via the ancient balladry of Strange Trouble and Bride of the Lion to Hey Little, a chamber folk lullaby for his kids. Sally Timms and Catherine Irwin lead a succession of sweet female harmony foils, sighing strings are arranged by his cousin Ryder McNair and brother Ned is in there too, adding to the timeless Americana heartbeat.

CLASSICAL

Hallé: Huw Watkins (Hallé) ★★★★

It begins with a rousing fanfare, reminiscent of Britten (luminous antiphony) but with heaving brass surges that add heft as well as a distinctive signature. This is Huw Watkins’ Fanfare for the Hallé, written for the Manchester-based orchestra which he served as composer-in-association from 2015 to 2018, and it’s the opener to an album exclusively dedicated to the Welsh-born composer. The personal connection is equally pronounced in two major works - Symphony No 2 and Concerto for Orchestra - performed lovingly by the Hallé under conductor emeritus Sir Mark Elder. These are ravishingly-scored, a vital explorative voice wrapped in soulfulness and warmth. The potent organic discipline of the Symphony, softened by rippling post-Delian images, embraces a style that shifts deftly between quixotic playfulness and fiery elation. The Concerto, a cinematically-scored orchestral showpiece, is equally imaginative, at times hypnotically beautiful, frequently delirious and excitable and always pleasurable. Ken Walton

JAZZ

Sarah L King: The Light Ahead (Peccadillo) ★★★★

Vocalist and songwriter Sarah L King’s second album features fresh, soul-inflected jazz carrying her heart-on-sleeve lyrics as well as four characterful covers, supported by the core trio of Jim Watson on piano and keys, electric bassist Laurence Cottle and drummer Jamie Murray, plus guests. It’s produced by Claire Martin, who joins Marley J Wills in support vocals. The Heron sets the tone, ornithology meeting yearning over a crisp, funky groove, while James MacMillan’s trumpet laces through the optimism of April. He’s joined by trombonist Chris Traves for the brassy choruses and vocal responses of Get My Fingers Burnt. Glistening keyboards and King’s persuasively joyous vocals colour the bossa shuffle of Stevie Wonder’s Overjoyed, while that old disco chestnut Never Can Say Goodbye takes on sassy swing and Nicola Conte’s Like Leaves in the Wind closes the album with King and band cruising confidently into the light. Jim Gilchrist

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