Sam Smith’s Hazel Eyes

Tracks: Everlasting Love, Hazel Eyes, Moondance, My Guy, When He's Gone, Thief, Love Is A Stillness, Sugar Rush, Oh Mother, Constant Companion, Hold On, To Be Free

Label:SSW Recordings Limited

Sam Smith’s Hazel Eyes feels like an intriguing retreat from the provocateur persona of recent years. Having pushed boundaries and, with Gloria, really established themselves as a pop provocateur, Smith now takes an interesting side step into safer, more familiar terrain. The move should, at least in theory, spare them some of the unfairly aimed criticism that accompanied their more flamboyant era. Yet there is a catch: in stepping back towards the soul-pop that first made their name, Smith sometimes play it just a little too safe to make the biggest impact.

There is plenty to admire here. Hazel Eyes is richly produced and, at its best, allows Smith’s extraordinary voice to breathe rather than simply serve as another component in a maximalist pop production. Everlasting Love opens with a gently fingerpicked guitar and sultry minor chords before Smith’s nimble head voice glides over restrained strings and horns. It is sleek and sophisticated, recalling the understated elegance of Sade without feeling like mere pastiche.

Elsewhere, the album’s more left-field touches point towards a more interesting future. The influence of Feist is particularly welcome, bringing a little raggedness and intimacy to songs that might otherwise settle too comfortably into adult-contemporary polish. Moondance adds a simmering blues-rock grit, while the minimalist “Thief” creates a windswept, romantic haze that feels considerably less predictable than some of Smith’s grander gestures.

That tension is at the heart of Hazel Eyes. Smith has moved away from the knowingly provocative, sometimes irritating excesses of Gloria, but the alternative is not always as liberating as it ought to be. Too often, songs that begin with intriguing restraint are inflated into oversized emotional climaxes, with gospel choirs and swelling arrangements arriving almost on cue. The result can feel less like artistic rediscovery than a return to a familiar major-label template.

And perhaps that is the album’s central frustration. There are moments here when Smith sounds as though they are finally escaping the expectations that have accompanied them throughout their career: neither the traditional soul singer of Stay With Me nor the flamboyance of Unholy, but an artist finding something rougher, stranger and more personal in between. Those are the moments that make Hazel Eyes genuinely compelling.

For all the talk of Smith pushing boundaries, their most convincing progress may actually lie in these quieter experiments. The album suggests that they do not need outrageous styling or deliberately provocative pop to command attention. But having made the decision to retreat to safer ground, Smith perhaps retreated a little too far. Hazel Eyes is an appealing and occasionally beautiful record, but its safest instincts keep it from becoming the statement it could have been.