After Hours Review

The trick of this record is that it does not treat its retro synths as a costume. Max Martin and Oscar Holter build the eighties surfaces, then Tesfaye and Illangelo drag them somewhere colder, so Blinding Lights arrives as a euphoric chase and Alone Again opens the album on a bed of pure static panic. That contrast is the whole design. Heartless is the last great sneer of the old persona.

In Your Eyes lands the saxophone solo with a straight face and gets away with it. Save Your Tears is a perfect three minute pop song. Then Until I Bleed Out closes on nausea rather than triumph, which is the correct ending for a record about a man who cannot stop. The writing is still not the reason to be here, though the recurring self disgust gives the songs a spine the earlier pop albums lacked. Everything is sequenced, paced and mixed with an intent that Starboy never had. His best assembled album by a distance.