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So, bold new departure, or more of the same? It would take a superhuman effort to call any of it “experimental”, but the music on Love Goes sounds different to that of its predecessor: out with the retro-soul affectations and the nods in the direction of Coldplay in with misty pop-facing electronics, gentle tropical house shadings and Auto-Tuned backing vocals. “Because at a moment of such unsafety in my life, all I wanted to feel was safe. Then Smith told Zane Lowe that they were “not ashamed” that Love Goes was tamer, creatively, than 2017’s The Thrill of It All. Such talk was hard to square with their collaborators, including Shellback, Stargate and Steve Mac, the latter famed for his work with notoriously challenging Irish collective Westlife and for co-writing Rockabye, Clean Bandit’s 2016 Christmas No 1. Accordingly tweaked, Love Goes comes accompanied by a statement from Smith talking up its “experimental” nature and the collaborators who boldly “embraced my creativity and direction and allowed me to be whoever I wanted to be in the studio that day”, imploring fans to “listen with an open heart”, which seemed to suggest they might be in for a shock.