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With Delirium Ellie Goulding effectively completes her journey, begun on Lights and continued through Halcyon, into the middle of the road – a dangerous place, crowded as it is with more reckless, driving spirits than hers.
Overly reliant on hit producers like Max Martin and Greg Kurstin, it just lacks the distinction to sound appreciably different from their other clients: there’s an occasional childlike charm to her tremulous warble, as on “Around U”, but one’s mostly struck by how blandly unassertive are her songs of romantic disillusion.
She harmonises with herself immaculately over the snap and thump of Kurstin’s groove for “Aftertaste”, but the results sound tart and brittle; while elsewhere, the vocal treatments applied to “Don’t Need Nobody” and “We Can’t Move to This” make poor use of her greatest asset.
By far the most impressive piece here is “Army”, a song for her best friend, Hannah.
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