Ugly Season incorporates chimes, Mellotron, celeste, guitarrón, reggae pulses, and song structures loose enough that they seem to swell operatically, or, in the case of the thrilling “Eye in the Wall,” stretch into an extended disco mix. “No pattern,” he deadpans, under treatments so heavy they smother his words. A master of tone-setting opening lines, Hadreas starts the album with a statement of purpose. Decentering his angelic voice and direct lyrics, Ugly Season favors the experiments that always lurked on the outskirts of his songs. On his latest, the eerie and gorgeous Ugly Season, the 40-year-old makes a dramatic yet natural shift.

“Half of my whole life is gone,” he sang at the album’s start, sounding not just resigned, but satisfied: Life’s second act might actually be better than its first. By 2020’s Set My Heart on Fire Immediately, he had matured into a grown-and-sexy crooner, relating intimacy in the present tense and anecdotes of youthful gay struggle from a taller perch that comes with growing older. Yet rather than just mystifying his fans, Hadreas has seemed to age alongside them, first confessing adolescent traumas, then slyly signaling a watershed era of LGBTQ+ rights.