Khalid, Free Spirit review: A perfectly credible record that lacks personality

A military kid, shunted between schools, states and countries throughout his childhood, 21-year-old Khalid says he always felt “like an outcast”. So it took him a while to process being named as “the voice of a generation” when his second single, “Young Dumb & Broke” became a global hit last year. Mixing the smooth sounds of urban soul with angsty lyrics – about feeling alone and fretting over his mum smelling the dope he’d smoked in the car – he created a kind of mellow R&Bemo.

Although his sweetly grazed vocals are lovely, the Middle-Class Activist Mum in me wished that Gen Z had found themselves a more proactive hero. Still, I know they’re stressed by the personal pressures of social media and overwhelmed by the global political and environmental crises. You can’t really blame them for sinking into the undemanding beanbags of Khalid’s mid-tempo jams and passively inhaling his Grammy-nominated debut album, American Teen.

His follow-up album, Free Spirit, doesn’t mess much with the formula. I played it four times without really noticing it was on. Even sitting at my desk to write this review I find the tracks have wafted by without leaving any lingering melody or emotion. I mean, it’s perfectly pleasant. A positive ear spa at times. The beats roll easy. The synths soothe. There are echoey, underwater guitars of the kind you might find rippling through a Coldplay ballad. At times the twangy circular currents of those guitar motifs nod back to the gothic self-pity of The Cure. The production is warm and soft, with rounded, hints of Eighties-reference rising slowly through it like the globules in a lava lamp. And through it all is Khalid’s voice, consistently pitched at the sweet spot between pleasure and pain.

Lead single “Better” is a perfect taster. It’s a solid groove about a cosy-if-covert liaison, ornamented by a sexy-synth-kazoo setting that hasn’t had much of a workout since Stevie Winwood’s heyday. Disclosure deliver a good-quality, towelling robe of a beat to wrap around “Talk”: another slow steam of a track on which Khalid makes a sweet plea to find out where a relationship is going.

Often in a “Himalayan haze”, he sings about being a nice kid, struggling to text girls back when he’s busy (“My Bad”) then being on the other side of the equation, “bruising my finger hitting your line” to the immersive tropical percussion of “Don’t Pretend”. There’s a squelchily stoned bass on “Paradise” and that Robert Smith-lite guitar works its way into “Hundred and Alive”. On the widescreen yearning of “Free Spirit”, you hear an acoustic strum, though the frets get a little more funk, snap and blues on “Outta My Head” (featuring John Mayer). There’s also a great, spare riff on “Twenty One”, a song that never really evolves in the way you’d hope. All of which leaves us with a very credible record with no real mistakes – but no real personality, either.