It’s sometimes easy to forget what a massively successful artist Sam Smith is: five Grammys, an estimated 65 million albums sold and nearly 60 billion streams, a James Bond theme and multiple No. 1 singles all over the globe across a dozen-year career.

But after three multiplatinum albums that were basically in the same musical vein, Smith’s 2023 set “Gloria” was a major reset. In many ways, that album was about creative freedom — musically wide-ranging but surprisingly consistent, spanning from the menacing, global smash “Unholy” to ballads like “We Love Who We Love,” from the dancefloor-ready “I’m Not Here to Make Friends” to the baroque title track. It opened up a whole new lane for Smith in terms of image as well as music, especially with the provocatively sexual theme of “Unholy.” Smith had never hidden who they were, but they’d also never been quite so in-your-face about it either.

Creatively liberating as that album may have been, it’s a tough act to follow, and the only way to do it was another reset — which is exactly what Smith has done with “Hazel Eyes.” Granted, they’re coming from a very different place: With titles like “My Guy,” “Everlasting Love” and “Constant Companion” (not to mention the album’s cover artwork), Smith is obviously deeply in love and that’s what the songs are all about, although some are about the accompanying arguments and drama as well; Smith has also relocated to New York from their native England and has described the album as a “heartfelt ode” to their new home — although its often-hushed musical accompaniment hardly evokes the noise and bustle of NYC. And, not least, as Smith says in the album’s bio, “In the world we’re living in right now, singing about queer love with complete honesty and directness feels very important.”

That in itself is not so much of a change, but what’s drastically different here is the music: As previewed on Smith’s residencies in Brooklyn and San Francisco over the past year, the songs are largely acoustic based, with slow tempos, very little percussion and a soaring chorus of backing singers. There’s absolutely nothing that sounds like the singles from “Gloria” and, musically anyway, little that they’ve done before.

While the low-key production makes some of the songs seem to blend together on a cursory listen, closer examination reveals the songs are nearly as stylistically diverse as those on “Gloria,” from the moody “Moondance,” driven by an insistent drum machine and ghostly backing vocals, to the lovelorn “My Guy”; from the haunting “Thief” and the gospel-inflected “Oh Mother” to the the aching piano ballad “Love Is a Stillness” (which gets a little corny when the whistling comes in) and the shamelessly corny “Sugar Rush,” which concludes with doo-wop voices singing “Sammy wants the sugar.”  

Smith has changed up their collaborators as well: While “Gloria” was loaded with top-shelf hitmakers, here they’ve worked closely with co-producers/co-writers Simon Aldred (an Avicii and Liam Gallagher collaborator who worked with Smith early in their career) and David Odlum (Glen Hansard, Josh Ritter), with contributions from Feist, multi-instrumentalist Shahzad Ismaily, string arranger Rob Moose (Bon Iver, Phoebe Bridgers), singer Moses Sumney and, certainly loudest, the 28-member TwoCity Chorus Choir.

Ironically, the two final songs are the ones that sound most similar to Smith’s earlier work: the soulful “Hold On” has a stirring chorus and verses that recall their 2014 hit “Stay With Me,” and the closing “To Be Free” is a gorgeous ballad that starts with just gentle electric guitar and piano supporting Smith, but then the mighty chorus comes soaring in and the song swells to a skyscraping climax before coming back down for its finale.

“Hazel Eyes” finds Smith, now 34, entering the middle phase of their career with an album that’s low-key but adventurous, and leaves the path clear for whatever they choose to do next.