By Gabby Couter Year 12
This article is quite short simply due to the lack of new music being released last month to review :)
The Weeknd – My Dear Melancholy
Since the release and much success of The Weeknd’s (Abel Tesfaye) three mix tapes, Echoes of Silence, Thursday, and House of Balloons, Abel’s work has been quite inconsistent and a bit all over the place, so it was good to see another album from him, considering the large amounts of risks he was taking on his most pervious album, Starboy. This EP is quite the opposite of that. My Dear Melancholy is completely safe. Pretty much every song feels old and unoriginal with ‘Call Out My Name’ sounding quite similar to ‘Worth It’ from the 50 Shades of Grey soundtrack. Whilst sometimes Abel includes very dramatic and passionate lyrics, the post productions leave all the songs feeling so washed out and spacey, to the point where they all end up sounding the same. Whilst I do like the song ‘Hurt You’ and its groovy beat, it too is very unoriginal, sounding almost like ‘Starboy’. Also, the narrative of Abel being this bad boy, who loves them and then leaves them is getting pretty old; it was heard on ALL his other albums and he doesn’t add to it at all on this album (except on the closing track which is alright lyrically). Overall, it’s not his best. Honestly, it seems like quite a lazy album with songs which Abel has done before. He seems to be sticking to a formula that works which is kinda disappointing.
4/10
Notable Tracks:
- Privilege
XXXTENTACION - ?
After blowing up on SoundCloud a few years back for his overly aggressive, huge songs, XXXTENATACION stripped his 1st official album ’17’, back a lot to be really mellow, which I didn’t mind, although I did wish it was longer. I think that this album is quite good, taking on more, stylistically, than 17 and expanding his usually lofi genre, and although there are some points where he comes off sounding better than ever, some of his more ridiculous tracks are on this EP. One thing which really annoys me about this album is the opening track with ‘instructions’ on how to listen to this album. I thought this was completely ridiculous and pretentious because the album itself is not exploring some weird, far-fetched concept which could not be understood without this. That being said, the sound of this album is much better than his previous album, although not perfect. All songs give a very quick, instant vibe, sampling moody rap, folk and rock. Again, the songs are so short that you are left wanting more, which after his last album with this same problem, you would think he would’ve fixed; it simply leaves the listener unsatisfied and doesn’t allow XXX to display as much talent as I believe he has. The longest song on the whole album is 3:12, which is kinda disappointing. Overall, it was good to see more diversity in XXX’s sound, but I would just want to see more. I appreciate the 18 song EP, but with them being at an average 2 minutes each, it just felt short and unfinished and I’m left wanting more.
6/10
Notable Tracks:
- Schizophrenia
- Moonlight
- Numb
Images Sources from:
Comments