While my taste for Ed Sheeran is pretty much non-existent, new single Small Bump at least has the virtue of offering something vaguely different from the insubstantial weepy balladry of The A Team, Drunk and Lego House. Whereas Sheeran's previous singles blurred away into a formless mass of nothingness that girls cried into their pillows over, Small Bump - with its chilled, almost Balearic contentedness - feels a far better, slicker fit for Sheeran as the Big Star he now is. It feels more confident; sloughing off the slightly awkward, shy overtones that affects so much of his music - and to be honest, it just feels like it offers more variety, albeit it subtly.
It's that persistent heartbeat rhythm and the whisperings of shimmery synths that play over Small Bump's closing passages that do it, that elevate this above your standard Sheeran fare. It's by no means a complete salvation, but it does at least offer a glimmer of hope that the inevitable second album from Sheeran might be more in this vein of things.
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