Harry Styles Is Up for Anything on ‘Kiss All the Time. Disco, Occasionally.’

A little more than halfway through this delightfully strange, often lovely, and consistently fascinating album, things get downright freaky, at least musically speaking. Having deployed epic amounts of bass, a gospel choir, a valiant drummer who — whether it’s a thumper or a ballad — continually gets wicked, a wide array of rhythm tricks and tracks, guitars both acoustic and electric, and all sorts of pulses, washes, and rinses, Harry Styles shrugs and says: Why not everything at once?

“Season 2 Weight Loss” begins with some electric noise — something buzzing to life, plugging in, booting up, or feeding back — before keyboards that would be at home on a Kraftwerk record echo across a few seconds of stillness. What kicks in next sounds like the chopped-up breakbeats of drum-and-bass, except the beats keep hitting in odd places, like they’re trying to hide from the tempo instead of drive it.

And when the bass thumps to life, it’s slightly out of sync, as if there were three tabs open on your computer, each playing a different song. Styles is addressing someone who could have been in his arms but who keeps holding out — “Do you love me now?” he asks, not for the first or last time on Kiss All the Time.

Disco, Occasionally. in search of something just out of reach. The music builds and builds — calliope keys chasing a chorus of voices off in the distance, the drums banging like someone trying to break down a door — until, as if a mediation bell has rung to clear the space, things pause so Styles can sing, “You’ve got to sit yourself down sometimes.” And then, precept delivered, it all starts up again.