It’s followed by a slew of love songs, some of which leap from speakers a bit more readily: The sparse, snap-assisted “Back to Life” turns a lover into a lifesaver “Stand Still” places Zayn, pleading in chorus with himself, within chilly synths and a rubbery guitar solo the sumptuous “I Don’t Mind” rides a laconic groove with hope and swagger. Icarus Falls opens with Zayn in love, or at least something like it: “Sweet baby, our sex has meaning,” he murmurs over the percolating guitars and plush synths of the album’s first track, the bedheaded devotional “Let Me.” (His ability to just barely pull off that bodice-ripper-worthy line is a sign of his skillful interpretative sense.) It’s a gorgeous opening, straddling the space between the breezy acousti-R&B that dominated the late ’00s and the snare-heavy rhythms of modern trap-pop while also flaunting Zayn’s falsetto.
“I guess I flew too close to the sun/Myth’ll call me legend, that might be why,” he muses before label-dropping Yves Saint Laurent. But Icarus Falls is actually a double album, cleaved in two by “Icarus Interlude,” which features Zayn hammering home the concept over spindly guitars. And it’s partly that Zayn told British Vogue that some of its tracks were rescued from the sessions for Mind of Mine, which resulted in some “60-something” completed songs. On first glance, the 27-track length of Icarus Falls indicates a data dump, those streaming-age behemoths made to be played on repeat by stat-happy fans while they sleep. Icarus Falls, its followup, treads more of the same ground-a lot more, actually-while also serving up a few surprisingly sublime pop moments. Mind of Mine, Zayn’s 2016 solo debut, was steeped in the dry-ice chills of modern R&B, Zayn’s still-lithe tenor guiding the listener through tremulous, sexually charged tracks.
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