channel ORANGE Review

Every song here has people in it. Super Rich Kids is about boredom in a Los Angeles penthouse and it is genuinely funny before it is sad. Pilot Jones invents a whole failed relationship in three minutes. Crack Rock is unsparing without a trace of moralising. Bad Religion, sung to a taxi driver he will never see again, is the most naked thing on the record and it was released alongside a letter about a man he loved, which redirected what a mainstream R&B singer was permitted to be.

Pyramids is the centrepiece: ten minutes moving from ancient Egypt to a motel, with a beat change halfway and a John Mayer solo that somehow works. Malay's production is warm and unfussy, keyboards and live drums, with plenty of air. If anything holds it below his next record it is a slight tidiness, a sense of an artist still showing his work. A remarkable, generous album.