After this album, Ed Sheeran finally puts an end to the silly arithmetic symbols. However, the minus symbol fits very well: the entire album is about losses and fear of loss and how they can perhaps be endured. Right from the first song, “Boat”, it becomes clear that commonplaces won’t do any good: “They say that all scars will heal, but I know/ Maybe I won’t, but the waves won’t break my boat.” Like The Brit repeats the last sentence with a mantra – and so it goes on for 48 minutes: He accepts fate, leans against it, tries to swim with the flow and yet crashes again and again into a rock that is just standing there stupidly on the path for healing.
Ed Sheeran wrote 14 songs that describe all the conflicting feelings of grief
In short, Ed Sheeran wrote 14 songs, mostly with Aaron Dessner (The National), that describe all the conflicting feelings of grief, and because he’s Ed Sheeran, he doesn’t do it with complicated words, he does it very directly. You can find it banal, it’s probably just being honest. Often it just doesn’t work anymore, there aren’t the right words anyway when everything hurts – that’s what “Life Goes On” is about. So Sheeran dreams himself free in “Salt Water” and describes in “Eyes Closed” (the only track that hitmaker Max Martin had a hand in) that sometimes only suppression helps against missing out. Dancing with your eyes closed, because then you might not notice how much the other person is missing – an image that everyone can really relate to. That’s why Sheeran sells Fantastillions — and because he’s not afraid of oversharing. He lets out everything he feels. Lots of sadness here.
Every now and then, like on “Dusty” or “Curtains”, a small beat is added, but “-” isn’t a party album, the instrumentation is opulent, but the basic tone remains muted. The quiet moments beat every bombast anyway – and of course it’s again the unmistakable voice that carries you through all these ballads. This time she almost collapses in desperation, for example when Sheeran mourns the lost naivety in “End Of Youth” (and that wine is no solution either). At the end there is confidence, accompanied by a gentle piano: In “No Strings” he celebrates unconditional love, with the folk piece “The Hills Of Aberfeldy” he then goes to the Scottish Highlands.
The last sentence reads: “And I know you will never find/ Another heart that wants you more than mine.” Then the sun does rise again.
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