Album review: The Weeknd’s superb ‘purgatory soundtrack’, Dawn FM
The fifth album by this chart-topping Canadian R&B/pop singer-songwriter is a glimmering accomplishment from an artist completely at ease within his creative rhythm.
Album reviews for week of January 22, 2022:
R&B / POP
Dawn FM
The Weeknd
Republic Records
The Weeknd’s fifth album, Dawn FM, is a perfect accompaniment to his last release, 2020’s After Hours, both tonally and sonically. Where its predecessor flirted with the idea of a neon-lit, ’80s synth-driven nightscape of decadence, here the Canadian artist born Abel Tesfaye leans all the way in. He is always at his best when crooning about hook-ups laced with regret; the drug-fuelled anxieties that plague a paranoid romantic; the desire for the unattainable that keeps him returning to old mistakes. In its layers of divine synth and finely tuned production, Dawn FM positions an artist who, despite his revisiting a number of these tropes, feels slightly more self-aware that unhealthy behaviours will eventually catch up with you. The prosthetics, grey wig and facial hair that age 31-year-old Tesfaye on the cover artwork juxtapose the bloody bandages seen on After Hours – and so, too, does the music. Songs like Take My Breath and Here We Go … Again can stand up perfectly against the mammoth 2019 single Blinding Lights, but it’s tracks like Out Of Time, Gasoline and Every Angel is Terrifying that have the ability to properly captivate.
Ethereal interludes narrated by Jim Carrey flesh out the radio station aesthetic Dawn FM is built around: the concept of a purgatory soundtrack. In interviews, Tesfaye has said this is music he envisions listening to in a traffic jam while approaching the eventual light at the end of the tunnel. And perhaps it’s this glimmering sense of hope or wonder of what awaits in the afterlife that propels this album into a career-defining space for The Weeknd. It’s a work that gives hints of each of his creative eras that have come before, while keeping its focus well trained on what lies ahead for the auteur. Dawn FM offers The Weeknd’s best parts, distilled into a 51-minute R&B/pop/electronic trip. Pristine vocals meet a style of storytelling that is both melancholic and addictive. After Hours may still be home to his biggest hit to date, but this 16-track set proves that such success hasn’t rocked his creative drive. It’s a superb accomplishment from an artist completely at ease within his creative rhythm.
Sosefina Fuamoli
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POP/FOLK
Room 822
Emily Barker & Lukas Drinkwater
Cooking Vinyl/Thirty Tigers
Every dark cloud has a silver lining and WA-raised, UK-based singer-songwriter Emily Barker and her multi-instrumentalist partner/producer Lukas Drinkwater found theirs during a fortnight’s quarantine. Turning their Perth hotel room into an ersatz recording studio, they set about covering some of her favourite Aussie pop songs. The result is an enchanting album that not only showcases the singer’s bewitching voice but also reveals her flair as an interpreter. So effective is Barker’s softly, softly acoustic approach that she makes several anthems her own, such as Tomorrow (by Silverchair), Under The Milky Way (The Church) and The Captain (Kasey Chambers). Barker’s vibrato educes extra irony from London Still (The Waifs) and injects additional pathos into Paul Kelly’s climate inaction ode, Sleep, Australia, Sleep, while her renditions of Deborah Conway’s forthright Will You Miss Me When You’re Sober? and Stella Donnelly’s more recent Boys Will Be Boys are perfectly positioned partners.
Tony Hillier
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JAZZ
Flux
Delay 45
Earshift Music
Trumpeter Tom Avgenicos’s album should be seen in relation to the groundbreaking work of Scott Tinkler, whose explorations of the sound possibilities in jazz trumpet expression have been extremely influential. Over the years Sydney’s Phil Slater and Melbourne’s Paul Williamson have reflected on Tinkler’s achievements but, in Flux, Avgenicos issues a comprehensive critique. Avgenicos appears to be saying: “I am here, and this is what I can do on the trumpet.” It’s a compelling exercise. The Delay 45 quartet affords Avgenicos a sympathetic platform for his ideas. Roshan Kumarage (piano), Dave Quinn (bass) and Ashley Stoneham (drums) are three brilliant young musicians who go back many years with Avgenicos, and on this album are with him all the way. Although there is much unbridled expression here, it’s not inconsequential that Avgenicos’s approach incorporates a commendable lyricism which is amply supported by the others, particularly in the case of Kumarage’s rhapsodic contributions on piano.
Eric Myers
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ROCK / FOLK / EXPERIMENTAL
Mess Esque
Mess Esque
Milk! Records
Melbourne guitarist Mick Turner (Dirty Three) and Brisbane singer-songwriter Helen Franzmann (McKisko) hadn’t yet met in person when they finished this second collaboration as Mess Esque, but that doesn’t diminish the organic flow and stirring layers of these pleasantly off-kilter compositions. Swapping parts remotely, Turner supplied the music while Franzmann focused on vocals and lyrics. Her dusky murmur on the mostly improvised Sweetspot captures the late-night intimacy of her home-recorded vocal turns, just as opener Wake Up to Yesterday reflects the mundane dislocation of lockdown. Bassist Peggy Frew and drummer Marty Brown from Melbourne slow-core veterans Art of Fighting lend their quiet gravity as needed, and Dirty Three drummer Jim White appears on the 10-minute centrepiece Jupiter. Turner and Frew’s son Fraser even plays some clarinet. Varying from plainly conversational to more stylised, Franzmann’s singing is especially engaging on the sloshing, markedly upbeat Take It Outside.
Doug Wallen
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R&B
An Evening with Silk Sonic
Silk Sonic
Aftermath/Atlantic
The trajectory of Bruno Mars has been retroactively engineered: the more he’s mined pop and soul’s bygone eras, the more popular he has become. Meanwhile, though not an arena filler in his own right, Anderson .Paak has carved a similar niche between past and present, working with everyone from Kendrick Lamar to Smokey Robinson. This release marks the duo’s maiden voyage together, but their irrepressible chemistry makes it feel like they’ve been Sinatra and Martin-style companions for decades. The album’s reputation is preceded by its big singles: the velvety Leave the Door Open and the hilariously biting Smokin Out the Window. Across its half-hour runtime, however, the freshly minted Silk Sonic maintains that same charisma and ’70s funk aesthetic that made it so appealing in the first place. Fly As Me boasts sizzling horns and chicken-picking guitar, while Put On A Smile has Mars in full Lothario flight to impeccable effect. Without a skerrick of fat on it, An Evening with Silk Sonic ensures a night to remember.
David James Young
Album reviews for week of January 15, 2022:
ELECTRONIC
Fragments
Bonobo
Ninja Tune
★★★★
For someone accustomed to life “on the go” – a rinse-and-repeat cycle of clubs, festivals, airports, hotels and studio time that has, for over 20 years, fuelled creativity and driven dancefloor connection – Bonobo’s seventh album came from a standing start. Grounded by the pandemic, LA-based Brit Simon Green sought refuge and inspiration in nature, camping in Utah’s valleys and California’s deserts, and battling creative blocks to slowly, patiently, bring together the pieces – the fragments – of what could be his finest album yet. Like 2017’s brilliant Migration, for which Green received two Grammy nominations, Fragments revels in a number of musical styles; it’s a restless yet soothing mix of techno, UK bass, ambient and house that shouldn’t fit together so cohesively, and that reinforces Bonobo’s position as one of the electronic scene’s brightest lights. From the contemplative strings of beatless opener Polyghost, the album melds modular synths, organic instrumentation and some stirring vocal performances to explore themes of isolation, doubt and struggle — heavy concepts that are ultimately overrun by more hopeful, joyous rhythms.
Here, warm ballads like sax-infused closer Day By Day featuring Kadhja Bonet and gloomy downtempo From You (featuring Joji) brush against harder, club-focused fare. The low-slung Tides serves as the album’s centrepiece, effortlessly gliding on the smoky tones of Chicago singer-songwriter Jamila Woods. Green’s multi-layered approach to production shines here, as Lara Somogyi’s warbling harp and a soaring string outro from Miguel Atwood-Ferguson combine. In contrast, Otomo, a co-production with Ninja Tune label mate O’Flynn, is a snarling dancefloor beast built around a sample from the Bulgarian choir 100 Kaba-Gaidi, with respite provided via a dramatic breakdown. First single Rosewood nods to Detroit house, its building intensity powered by synths and vocal stabs. Shadows, similarly, channels the motor city sound of Moodymann and Theo Parrish for a smouldering standout featuring vocals of Jordan Rakei, who pleads to “Save me, save me from the unknown / While I daydream and leave this world to follow”. Fragments might have been produced in isolation, but that sense of struggle — balanced with enduring hope — has created an album of deep emotional intensity that’s sure to unite when Bonobo hits the road in the US next month.
Tim McNamara
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ROCK/COUNTRY
My Morning Jacket
My Morning Jacket
ATO Records
American ensemble My Morning Jacket dived into this ninth album after a half-decade hiatus that the band members thought might be permanent, making it a bit of a bonus. But while MMJ still exhibits a free-flowing sense of exploration, not everything here works. Notably, the nine-minute centrepiece The Devil’s in the Details broadly addresses war, global warming and capitalism, declaring “We all stand complicit in the greed”. It feels awkward and unresolved, despite the best intentions of frontman Jim James. The reggae lilt of Lucky to Be Alive and blurted rock of Complex also weaken the band’s usual hold, thinly echoing past variations on their cosmic Americana. Yet there’s still plenty to admire, like the lived-in finale of Never in the Real World and the growing robustness of opener Regularly Scheduled Programming. For all of My Morning Jacket’s stylistic breadth, the best track here is the most straightforward: Out of Range, Pt. 2, a heartfelt ballad streaked with luminous guitars and James’s dreamy, yearning voice.
Doug Wallen
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METAL
Hushed and Grim
Mastodon
Reprise Records
With eight albums, Mastodon’s trajectory can be neatly split. Its first four are bloodthirsty, wildly ambitious and wholly unique metal; crushing, down-tuned heaviness with high-form conceptuality. Since 2011’s The Hunter, however, the Atlanta quartet has had its sharpness blunted by formulaic structure and uncharacteristic user-friendliness. Returning with a near-90-minute double album, it seems on paper that Mastodon is shooting for the stars again. Things start promisingly, with the rush of drums in Pain with an Anchor, with said muscle continuing into Sickle and Peace. Its instrumental talents remain intact too, with plenty of piercing guitar solos and dizzying drum fills. It’s an exhausting effort that suffocates its finer moments with a heft of filler; needless repetition drags most tracks past five minutes. With its treacly, overbearing structure and lack of contrast between chugging gallops and slow-motion balladry, there’s an argument to be made for Hushed and Grim being Mastodon’s weakest LP yet.
David James Young
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