In the Lonely Hour only knows one way to spin its grand thesis. Its fatal flaw is not its singular mindset, but the monotonous execution of that mindset. It hums along at one bleak, naively hopeful tone that often loses affect. It’s musically stark, too, compressing chord progressions and melodies into subdued acoustic guitar and piano riffs draped occasionally in strings. It spends its time trying to minimize emotional space (for solidarity’s sake, Smith dreams about getting mugged outside a lover’s house), physical space (he wants to hold hands during a one-night stand), even relational space (he pushes a beau to leave another lover). It wallows not because of isolation but because of a glaring lack of intimacy and empathy. In fact, it isn’t about loneliness at all it’s about the painful, unavoidable desire for suffocating closeness fostered by unrequited love. In the Lonely Hour, Sam Smith’s passionate major label debut, isn’t as much about loneliness as it is about distance.

In the lonely hour album art