Louis Tomlinson has acknowledged that his solo career is “an ever-evolving process”, but he appears to be heading in the right direction
When Louis Tomlinson first embarked on his post-One Direction solo career he seemed happy to mine dance-pop crossovers, working on club-friendly singles with Steve Aoki and Bebe Rexha. Then, in 2020, his debut solo album ‘Walls’ arrived and presented something of a U-turn – guitar-driven anthems heavily indebted to the Gallagher brothers. That record might have been closer to the music Tomlinson wanted to make, but, at the time, he was still letting himself get caught up in overthinking spirals about authenticity and the need to cement his own artistic niche ASAP.
‘Faith In The Future’, his second solo album, marks a loosening up and letting go of that attitude; its creator instead “following my heart musically and seeing where it gets me”, as he told NME earlier this year. Like ‘Walls’, he wears his love for indie on his sleeve here, but allows himself the space to experiment, no longer trying to emulate his heroes.
This new record is at its best when he does just that. ‘All This Time’ is a slow-burning shimmer – like a sunset fizzling out on a Balearic horizon – with all soft-focus synths and low, hushed vocals, akin to Phoenix’s Thomas Mars singing over one of LCD Soundsystem’s grander pieces. ‘Out Of My System’ flips a switch and replaces those sparkles with shadows, laying out an Arctic Monkeys-influenced prowler that swaggers towards catharsis. “Gotta get it out of my system / Gotta get it off of my chest,” Tomlinson declares. “I lived a lot of my life already / But I gotta get through the rest.” ‘She Is Beauty, We Are World Class’, meanwhile, marries Pet Shop Boys with Ibiza euphoria with electric results.
Tomlinson also makes some bids for future indie disco anthems, not least on the bruised ‘Face The Music’ and ‘Silver Tongues’. The latter opens with a deceptive piano melody that sounds like we’re destined for a maudlin ballad, but quickly evaporates into a bouncy burst of energy that pays tribute to carefree nights with your favourite people. Slow swayers are still represented here, too: Tomlinson is now an expert at those epic, emotional moments, but on this album, they don’t spark the same excitement as his more inventive endeavours.
If ‘Walls’ found Tomlinson still figuring out what this part of his artistic journey should be, ‘Faith In The Future’ feels much more assured. It doesn’t reinvent the wheel of modern guitar music, but is a solid step forward as the musician continues what he’s acknowledged will be “an ever-evolving process”. Album two shows, though, that he’s very much heading the right way.
“When I first started out my solo career, and I think this is me probably kind of protecting myself, in hindsight now that I look back, when I thought about getting into the industry, I thought ‘maybe I’ll just do some songwriting. Maybe pitch them out to other artists’. I couldn’t really see myself as a solo artist. Just because I’d never really had that moment to have those thoughts when I was in the band. So yeah, I dunno. I think over time I’ve just felt a little bit braver and just went for it really. There was definitely times it was challenging, but I like to think — and I could be wrong — I like to think those days are behind me now. I feel like I’ve worked out who I am as an artist and what I need to do, so hopefully I’ve left those thoughts in the past.”
-Louis on if he ever thought about not doing music anymore. (18 October 2022)
“Well, the campaign always starts with the fans. They’re the most important part of this process. It’s community-led and that very much comes from Louis. Every night on stage, he says, ‘I need you and you need me’. And when you’re in the middle of this, you see that as well, it’s very much a two-way street. So everything we do is geared around what’s good for the fan experience. There are only so many places we can go on a tour, but we make sure they feel included on a global level. The livestream actually gave us a lot of confidence on pushing the capacities in some territories. It really helped with some of our promoter conversations as well. One suggested we should come and play a 3,000-cap venue. We shared the livestream data and said, ‘Look, we think you’re really under-estimating this’. We ended up selling 20,000 tickets in that city.”
— Matt Vines on how he takes Louis’ original fanbase along his solo career to Music Business Worldwide
“[The power of a fanbase is the] one thing that Louis has and the band had – the audience is incomparable to anything that I’ve ever seen. With every promoter we’ve ever worked with, we say, ‘You’re going to have to prepare for this, because the fans will be there a week before the show, we have to put on facilities and security – you’re not ready for what’s going to happen here’. And every time they say, ‘Yes we are’ and afterwards they go, ‘Holy shit, we didn’t expect that to happen’! There’s a duty of care that comes with that that we put a lot of time into.”
waking up to harry being dressed as danny zuko, louis’ famously signature role, for harryween AND singing hopelessly devoted was not something I thought was on the cards my friends
waking up to louis casually dropping harry goes to his shows probably regularly in the times interview was not something I thought was on the cards my friends
“If I’m performing in the evening, I have a double vodka and Red Bull to calm my nerves. When I was in One Direction, that pre-show ritual made me feel like a rock star. It just gives you such a great f***ing feeling on stage. I’d love to say I don’t get more nervous if I know Harry [Styles] or any of the other boys are in the crowd, but I do. You want to give your best.”
-Louis on the pre-show rituals he’s used to do to calm his nerves. (2 November 2022)
via The Times
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