Goulding clear-eyed and in control on ‘Delirium’

ELLIE GOULDING Delirium POP

DOWNLOAD On My Mind, Don’t Panic, Lost And Found

“I think sometimes it sounds like my voice is, like, out of control,” Ellie Goulding told Carson Daly in 2012. But actually, Goulding’s quavering lyric soprano is an instrument with beauty and character (if not quite the technical marvel some admirers have suggested), which conveys her desire to slightly unsettle the listener, on her own terms.

That quality has been increasingly evident since Goulding ’s emergence with 2010’s

Lights, the gently ambitious debut that made the British singer a star at home. (Her take on Elton John’s Your Song earned her a gig at William and Kate’s wedding.)

The follow-up Halcyon Days felt empowered by her growing international fame, more aggressive in its electronically driven arrangements.

The new Delirium, title notwithstanding, finds Goulding sounding more laser-focused than ever. The album, out Friday, teams her with pop savants such as Max Martin, Ryan Tedder and, perhaps most crucially, Greg Kurstin, also a collaborator on

Halcyon Days. Kurstin’s work with Sia, in particular, seems to inform the sharp hooks and sparkling textures that fuel these lithe but muscular tracks.

Intro (Delirium) opens the album with Goulding cooing in her upper register, then dipping into throatier, Eastern-flavored melisma, as strings are layered on top of the eerie synth foundation. It’s moody stuff, but segues confidently into the breathless

neo-disco of Aftertaste.

The beat goes on from there, from the twinkle and thump of

Something in The Way You Move to the more bittersweet drive of the current single On My Mind, with its pining guitar fills and bright electronic bursts embellishing the catchy choruses.

Goulding ’s vocals, while never overwhelmed, often seem like part of the mix rather than a driving force, especially on bouncy-yet-generic tunes

Around U and We Can’t Move To

This .But Delirium also offers her vehicles such as the anthemic (and sweetly banal) Army, which lets her show off her voice’s dusky nuances before rising to a gleaming belt.

Her textured singing also shines on Lost and Found, cowritten by Martin and Swedish colleagues Joakim Berg, Carl Falk and Laleh Pourkarim (with Goulding) and melodically worthy of their forebears in ABBA.

“I got big dreams, baby,” Goulding sings on the percolating Don’t Panic, another high point of Delirium.

“So don’t you overcomplicate it.”

At this point, it seems unlikely she’ll be disoriented, distracted or disrupted by anyone.