Mind of Mine // Zayn

Zayn: Mind of Mine (2016)

In One Direction, Zayn contributed a distinct, introspective personality, the pleasing and elastic geometry of his hair, a capable falsetto, and an emotional reserve which contrasted tastefully with the adolescent exuberance of his bandmates. On his own, uninterrupted by four other voices, his vocal can sound shapeless, with his vowels collapsing into mumbled piles of feeling. His highly anticipated solo album is state-of-the-art amorphous R&B, Frank Ocean and Miguel-indebted stuff that swerves in and out of focus like headlights through a fog. But his voice doesn't stand out in it, and on fussy, textured songs like "tRuTh" and "BoRdErSz," he's just an additional cloud in a misty atmosphere.

In sparer, more reduced arrangements you can hear him strain; "fOoL fOr YoU" is a Beatles pastiche, just piano and drums and Zayn, and his voice sounds pinched and exposed. He sounds lovely on "sHe" and "dRuNk," incidentally the most assured songs on the record. There’s a dexterity to "sHe" that seems vacuumed out of the rest of the album, his vocal moving nimbly among blurred pulses of guitar and inverted piano clusters. When he unleashes his falsetto, it pierces the track, a crystal tower rising through the surface of the earth. It’s the only instant on Mind of Mine that seems to hint at his actual capacity for pop artistry. There’s also something gorgeous and spectral to his voice on the intermission, "fLoWeR," which is sung entirely in Urdu; he snaps with ease into the perpendicular arrangement of notes.