★★☆☆☆
Two Stars
Delirium is the husky-voiced Goulding’s third studio album. After the rather confusing ‘Intro’, which is often likened to an early 7th Century Gregorian chant, Goulding slips back into more familiar shoes. There are a few rather bland synth-pop tracks, including ‘Aftertaste’, mixed in with crowd pleasers like the X-rated ‘Love Me Like You Do’ from the worryingly popular Fifty Shades of Grey. The song stands out from the rest of the album tracks for holding a convincing tune and employing only slightly repetitive lyrics.
Goulding issued an accompanying statement to the album, referring to it as an “experiment”. Having listened to it, spotting the raw experimentation is harder than finding Wally. This is not to say it’s a bad “big pop album”, but neither were her last two big pop albums. It would appear that Goulding is sometimes let down in the production of her songs, losing the smooth, crooning qualities of her vocals to a low-budget synth keyboard (I’m sure it’s actually a very expensive synth keyboard made to sound like it was free from a car boot sale), and Delirium is no exception.
True experimentation for Goulding would strip away the flashy lights and basic pop anthem beats to reveal a raw emotion of which songs like ‘How Long Will I Love You?’ have proven her capable.
