“Tension’s at its highest, baby,” the Philadelphia crooner and songwriter Fridayy admits in the intro to his third full-length, his glitch-processed voice making his admission seem even more abashed. The anxiety he expresses sets the tone for an album that explores how love and desire can turn a person inside out, with island-inspired rhythms, schoolyard taunts, quiet-storm opulence, heavy basslines and Fridayy’s sturdy baritone framing the ups and downs. “Haiku”, which features the R&B up-and-comer ilham as Fridayy’s antagonist, uses a giddy jeer—“Too thick, too fine, he want me/Too bad, I’m outside,” ilham trills—to illustrate Fridayy’s romantic woes. Over a hiccuping beat that’s made for chanting along to, he comes to the realisation that his cavalier ways have let love slip through his fingers: “You like what I said/But all you wanted was proof/Ooh, you right, baby,” he laments on the chorus, the sinking feeling that he messed up being driven home by each refrain. Fridayy isn’t so introspective that he’s avoiding the club: “Can You Stay” is a late-night come-on, as choirs swirl and a skip-step beat adds to his urgency. On “Time & Place”, he’s resisting someone who wants to have a relationship talk during a night of indulgence, complete with cavernous dancehall playing behind him. The detailed production on Tension shows how Fridayy’s mind is always at work, and it’s the moments of emotional growth that give the album its power. “Time Will Tell” swaddles Fridayy in synths and backing vocals as he lets someone go with love; “Moment” has the grandeur of “Purple Rain”, Fridayy playing with his falsetto as he recounts the ways he’d want to savour his final time with a lover. The final track, “Death Do Us Part”, a dreamy duet with R&B doyenne Mariah the Scientist, has the majesty of a wedding march, a happy ending of sorts for an album that examines modern romance in extreme close-up.