Arriving by surprise in mid-July, SWAG—the seventh album from the 31-year-old pop icon—was both a testament of love and a declaration of independence. Fresh off big changes in his professional life and intrusive speculation into his personal life (including a paparazzi clash that spawned the instant-classic one-liner, “It’s not clocking to you that I’m standing on business!”), Bieber’s 21 love songs to his wife, Hailey Bieber, doubled as a cathartic reintroduction to an artist who’s been famous nearly two-thirds of his life. Rising above the noise of the past year, SWAG showed the singer at his most soulful, sensual, messy and free. Not even two months later, SWAG II appears with just as little promotion (announced, like its predecessor, the day before its release), an even longer tracklist, and a similarly unencumbered raison d’être. Its 23 tracks—earthy, floaty, understated—draw from a similar sonic palette, informed by the sounds of his recent collaborators (Dijon, Mk.gee, Carter Lang) and, more distantly, by a gamut of R&B greats (Stevie Wonder, Michael Jackson, D’Angelo). Bieber channels The-Dream on the sultry “OH MAN”, evokes MJ on “DON’T WANNA” and tries his hand at indie folk on the reflective “MOVING FAST”, on which he nods to his controversy-courting past (“I was speeding toward a wall, I was 25, closed eyes/Looking for a light”). The skits of SWAG are absent, and the cameos less frequent—supporting vocals from Afrobeats star Tems and British singer Bakar, return appearances from Eddie Benjamin and Lil B, and an unexpected verse on “POPPIN MY S***” from ringtone rap luminary Hurricane Chris. Sexy, subtle and surprisingly mature, what initially register as love songs sometimes double as devotionals: the simple joys of domesticity, the sun and the sea blurring into one sublime celebration on “EVERYTHING HALLELUJAH”, as Bieber sings: “Let’s take a walk, hallelujah/Sun is out, hallelujah/I’m kissing you, hallelujah.” (He makes the religious subtext explicit on “STORY OF GOD”, a nearly eight-minute retelling of the Bible’s creation myth, which Bieber narrates as Adam.) Here, redemption can be found in an embrace, or in a reflection of his wife’s face in his infant son’s gaze, as it does on “MOTHER IN YOU”. In the end, it all comes down to the same thing, as he sings on the sweet, slow-burning “I THINK YOU’RE SPECIAL”: “Love is over everything/This is what I believe.”