Example

Won’t Go Quietly, released in 2010, brought a more concentrated pop and dance direction into his catalogue. Watch the Sun Come Up, the title track and Kickstarts make a revealing sequence: the production grows more emphatic, while the voice keeps the feeling of someone working through a situation in real time. A short melodic phrase can carry much of the song, especially when the arrangement leaves enough room around it.

Playing in the Shadows followed in 2011 with Changed the Way You Kiss Me and Stay Awake. The music has a darker and more insistent energy, drawing on several parts of contemporary club production. The vocal remains direct even as the instrumental setting becomes more dramatic. That contrast is one of the album’s strongest organising ideas.

The songs often move through apprehension, romantic friction and the disorientation of a night out. An electronic build can promise a release that the lyric does not quite deliver, leaving the emotional story more complicated than the chorus first suggests. The Evolution of Man later brought more prominent guitar textures into the sound, but the push between a conversational voice and a large arrangement remained. Example marks a useful transition from the dance-pop of the late 2000s to the more forceful electronic crossover of the early 2010s. Start with the singles, then return to the verses. The details that make the records personal are often sitting just before the part everyone remembers.