Review Summary: = average
I’m far from being an Ed Sheeran enthusiast, but even I can’t deny the smooth, summer-time dance beat that bastes Sheeran’s bread and butter sound on “Bad Habits”. For the first time in fact, I actually saw a glimmer of his talent; the track was stuck in my head for days afterwards, and I was actually okay with that. This led me to hope
= was going to be the shake-up in sound that got me into his music. A record filled with his typical, moping disposition, but one that had a backbone of synth-y vitality to support his signature inclinations. Of course, part of me knew it wouldn’t deliver in the same way “Bad Habits” did, but since that song was a knee-jerk reaction to the pandemic, I had a slither of optimism for Sheeran yearning for new pastures. The end result is a lamentingly missed opportunity, and the quality of the songs here is… mixed. On the whole, the LP is serviceable in what it does, but for both fans of Ed Sheeran and casual listeners alike,
= will only deliver half-a-dozen-or-so takeaways from its tracklisting.
Generally, the biggest problem with
= is it feels cobbled together. The flow is far from being its main strength: going from the cheesy folk-ballad “Tides” into the fun dance-funk tune “Shivers”, and then doubling down on the dichotomy with the dour austere-acoustic “First Times” feels like I’m riding on the Mouse Trap at Blackpool Pleasure Beach – which, if you don’t know the ride, was notorious for giving the thrill-seeker whiplash from its brutal 90 degree turns (think about how a Tron motorbike operates its turns and you’ll get the idea). Nothing feels cohesive here. On paper, clocking in at nearly forty-nine minutes, you would think that
= is going to be this big experience; in reality, all its length will do is have people picking out a handful of their favourite songs from it, and the rest they will callously throw away.
Which is a shame in all honestly, because there is potential in a lot of these tracks. Sure, for my own preferences, I loathed “The Joker and the Queen”, “Visiting Hours” and “First Times”’ devastating combination of dull-meets-corny, in these pulseless acoustic tunes, but I can’t lie by saying I didn’t enjoy the pop aspects of “Collide” or “Stop the Rain”. And that’s the thing with
=, it gets the hooky pop chorus down to the tee. Hell, initially I had an aversion to the jarring folk-hip-hop “2step”, but quickly became enamoured with its moody vibe, booming beat, and effective hooks. So, suffice it to say, there are moments that will click with you eventually or catch you off guard, but overall,
= tries to do too much, and the songs ultimately suffer for that. Since my preferences reside in what Ed Sheeran isn’t better known for, “Bad Habits” is the obvious highlight for me on here, but “Shivers” and “Overpass Graffiti” deliver on that same ethereal 80s-synth-pop sound that initially allured me into checking this album out in the first place. As for the rest of the album, it has little segments of potential, but its short attention span ultimately executes more misses than hits.
