One Direction may have just been formed in 2010 but the British boy band has come a long way in just four short years and their new album, “Four,” definitely shows the changes they have made.

If you compared the sound of their fourth album to their first, “Up All Night,” you would not believe the difference.

Changing their sound is something that members Harry Styles, Niall Horan, Louis Tomlinson, Liam Payne and Zayn Malick have been talking extensively about in interviews and now that seems more realistic since the band wrote most of the material on “Four.”

“Steal My Girl,” the opening track and first single, sounds classic One Direction with a catchy beat and a verse that you just want to belt your heart out to. However, the other 11 tracks sound like a more poppy version of Mumford and Sons, which is not a bad thing.
It is hard to pick the album’s best tracks because all of them are something fans did not know they needed until the album leaked 10 days early last Friday.

“Girl Almighty” is one of the catchiest songs on the album, making listeners want to jump out of their seats and dance around. It almost sounds like a track found on Coldplay’s 2011 album “Mylo Xyloto,” without the piano and lyrics more tuned to One Direction’s style.

“Fireproof” has some of the best lyrics of the bunch, with all five members singing about how their love is meant to last. It is quiet with a nice touch of a drumbeat that pulses in your ears.

The nice thing about the album is that band members are not singing at the tops of their lungs, forcing themselves into vocal octaves their voices do not belong, which is better than the strained sound on some of their other songs.

It makes a statement as a whole that One Direction is finally doing their own thing and finally have control over their sound. This is refreshing considering their start as just five boys on the X-Factor trying to make it in the pop industry.

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