There’s one moment in which Harry Styles transcends its big-name influences. Closer “From the Dining Table” opens with a startling scene: a horny, lonely Styles, jerking off in an opulent hotel room before falling back asleep and getting wasted. “I’ve never felt less cool,” he admits. The writing is frank and economic; it sounds like Styles is singing softly into your ear, a bashful mess. It’s the only song on the album that invites you to consider what it must be like to be Harry Styles: unfathomably famous since before you could drive, subjected to unrelenting attention everywhere except bunker-like studios and secluded beaches, forced to zip around and around the world for half a decade when you’re supposed to be figuring out who you are and what you want. And yet “From the Dining Table” sounds less like a complaint than a confession meant for you and you alone. It’s intoxicating, and it ends Harry Styles on the most promising possible note.
Pitchfork review (via heypopstar)
Wow.
