\n<\/p>\n
A<\/span>s he points out on the opening track of Play, Ed Sheeran has now been around a long time. It\u2019s 20 years since he self-released his debut album and 14 since he signed to a major label and set about becoming the most commercially successful British artist of his age: long enough that we\u2019re now seeing the appearance of pop stars who claim him as a formative influence. (Singer-songwriter Myles Smith, who was just into his teens when Sheeran released his breakthrough album +, even plays one of those little acoustic guitars that have long been Sheeran\u2019s trademark.) It\u2019s certainly long enough that anyone with even a passing interest knows what to expect when Ed Sheeran releases a new album.<\/p>\n <\/span>Ed Sheeran: Play.<\/span> Photograph: AP<\/p>\n Sheeran\u2019s success is based on a certain dependability: it doesn\u2019t seem to matter who he works with \u2013 Pharrell Williams, Eric Clapton, Eminem, the National\u2019s Aaron Dessner \u2013 the results always somehow sound exactly like Ed Sheeran. Whether you see that as evidence of a melodic signature so strong it rings out regardless of the musical setting or a failure of artistic imagination depends on whether you\u2019re among those who contributed to his cumulative sales figures of 200m, or part of the vociferous cadre who view him as the embodiment of all that\u2019s wrong with music. The latter camp gets a shout-out on Play\u2019s prosaically titled opening track Opening, essentially an older, more battered counterpart to You Need Me, I Don\u2019t Need You, the 2011 track that bullishly asserted his bona fides: \u201cNot the pop star they say they prefer,\u201d Sheeran raps.<\/p>\n Solid, dependable: these are adjectives one could apply to Play. His last two albums, 2023\u2019s muted \u2013 and Autumn Variations, were made with Dessner, the co-architect of Taylor Swift\u2019s folksy lockdown albums: the former was Sheeran\u2019s most acclaimed record critically, but the public seemed less convinced. Play has a sense of reassuring the shareholders about it: the big story is that Sheeran went to Goa to complete it, but \u2013 as with single Azizam\u2019s diversion into Persian music \u2013 the sounds of the subcontinent that have soaked into the end product feel like window dressing.<\/p>\n There\u2019s traditional Indian percussion here and there, most notably on Heaven, plus Hindi and Punjabi vocals and a guest appearance from Bengali singer Arijit Singh on Sapphire, but none of it really overwhelms the tracks\u2019 essential Ed Sheeran-ness: the former is sweetly emotive, the latter the kind of uptempo Ed Sheeran song that\u2019s a little too eager to please and ends up slightly grating. Tablas and Hindi lyrics or not, no one is ever going to wonder who made them, particularly when they\u2019re scattered among more traditional fare, which ranges in quality from ho-hum (the acoustic guitar-led ruminations of Old Phone) to exceptionally well crafted: the ruthlessly effective power balladry of Camera and The Vow, the lo-fi piano of In Other Words, the latter another contribution to a now-teetering pile of Sheeran songs that might have been designed for newlywed first dances.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n <\/span>Ed Sheeran: Sapphire \u2013 video<\/span><\/p>\n And the tracks recorded in India feel less striking than two songs made closer to home. A co-write with Fred Again, Don\u2019t Look Down, fruitfully places Sheeran\u2019s vocal amid luminous rave synths and, eventually, a pounding house beat. And highlight Symmetry opens with looped Indian percussion and vocals but quickly floats off in a different direction, involving spectral voices and heaving sub-bass. It\u2019s not a radical reinvention, but you sense an artist pushing softly at boundaries.<\/p>\n That said, Play is not incapable of springing genuine surprises: it comes as quite a jolt to hear Sheeran calling someone \u201ca prick\u201d on A Little More, then following it up with a line that definitely qualifies as a sick burn: \u201cAnd for your dad\u2019s sake, please move out your dad\u2019s place.\u201d The emotional temperature of Sheeran\u2019s music to date has ranged from sorrowful to lovestruck. He\u2019s never sounded angry. It\u2019s unclear who the song is aimed at, or what they\u2019ve done to rile him, but on A Little More, he seems genuinely livid: \u201cI hate you \u2026 one day we\u2019ll all be dead but between now and then I never want to see you again.\u201d It\u2019s both unexpected and weirdly bracing, its impact amplified by subtly effective electric piano and post-Amy Winehouse horns.<\/p>\n A curiously dark emotional undercurrent keeps bubbling up throughout Play. There are allusions to Sheeran\u2019s circle of friends contracting, to \u201cleeches\u201d and his heart being broken by \u201cloved ones\u201d. There are references to Sheeran\u2019s much-noted professional drive that make it sound paranoid and compulsive \u2013 \u201cif I look down I can see replacements \u2026 in this world there\u2019s no relaxing\u201d \u2013 and there\u2019s Slowly, ostensibly just a song about missing his wife when she\u2019s away \u201cfor a couple of days\u201d that expresses itself in such extreme terms as to feel quite disturbing: \u201ckill me slowly\u201d, \u201cthis is knife-in-the-heart love\u201d, \u201cI\u2019m dying alive\u201d.<\/p>\n Of course, these tinges of darkness are unlikely to impact on Play\u2019s commercial success. All its preceding singles already have streaming figures that look like phone numbers. But it does mean you leave it wondering what on earth is going on: the last feeling one expects to get from an Ed Sheeran album.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Gruff Rhys \u2013 Taro #1 <\/strong>+ #2<\/strong> As he points out on the opening track of Play, Ed Sheeran has now been around a long time. It\u2019s 20 years since he self-released his debut album and 14 since he signed to a major label and set about becoming the most commercially successful British artist of his age: long enough that we\u2019re now<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21245,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[13040,2658,1085,13039,12734,4221,13038,13041],"class_list":{"0":"post-21244","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-darkness","9":"tag-play","10":"tag-review","11":"tag-shards","12":"tag-sheeran","13":"tag-sounds","14":"tag-subcontinental","15":"tag-unmistakably"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21244","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=21244"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21244\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/21245"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=21244"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=21244"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=21244"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}This week Alexis listened to<\/h2>\n
A highlight from his new Welsh-language album Dim Probs: the cocktail of laid-back west coast rock meets motorik drums plus new wave-y sax is a peculiar one that nevertheless slips down smoothly.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"