My Dear Melancholy, ( The Weeknd/XO & Republic Records)
To Abel Tesfaye, drugs and romance go hand in hand. For seven years and counting, the Canadian R&B artist’s music has explored the ways in which heartbreak, debauchery and nihilism intersect. Look no further than “Can’t Feel My Face,” his first hit, where he compares being in love to the rush of getting high: “I can’t feel my face when I’m with you.”
Tesfaye’s unique style of R&B — disillusioned and coolly detached, but darkly passionate —has accompanied him all the way to the top of the charts, with albums like Beauty Behind The Madness and Starboy, both going platinum and spawning hits. He collaborated with the likes of Beyoncé, Kanye West and Daft Punk. He has even made it into the world of celebrity gossip, thanks to relationships with supermodel Bella Hadid and fellow pop star Selena Gomez.
Taking these factors into account, The Weeknd’s newest release is, in a lot of ways, somewhat bewildering. My Dear Melancholy, was released by surprise last Friday. It’s a six-song extended play that comes with moody artwork, an annoying-to-type comma at the end of the title, and production bathed in reverb and vintage samples. Upon the EP’s release, many fans praised its supposed return to the dark, depressing sound of Tesfaye’s debut trilogy of mixtapes. However, the album’s dark mood lacks any of the emotional depth of The Weeknd’s early work.
My Dear Melancholy, can’t decide whether it wants to be a shameless pop experiment or a tortured outsider album. As a result, it lives up to neither standard.
To summarize: it’s really boring.
Nearly everything you’ve ever associated with The Weeknd is here in Melancholy, which makes it tempting to fall under this EP’s spell, and to proclaim it a beautiful return to form. The truth, however, is that anyone hoping to hear another album from The Weeknd in the vein of his Trilogy will be disappointed. This EP is pretty enough, sure, but it’s startlingly bland in comparison to his other releases.
Just listen to opener “Call Out My Name,” a slow-paced heartbreaker that sounds like “Earned It,” but in a minor key and less interesting. The lyrics, meanwhile, are painfully simple, trading the barbed language of Trilogy for boring, dull platitudes. Maybe if this EP were more sonically exciting, the lyrics would be a little more forgivable. But Melancholy is full of sad, soporific music that makes the lyrics impossible to ignore.
The most frustrating thing about My Dear Melancholy, is that it actually isn’t that bad. These songs are bland, yes, but at least they’re palatable. The production rarely offends, and Tesfaye’s angelic voice is as good as ever on top of it. It is apparent that this EP was carefully and tastefully curated from top to bottom — it’s attractively packaged and produced, with input from the likes of Skrillex, Frank Dukes and Daft Punk once again. However, just because a record isn’t bad doesn’t mean it offers anything contrary, and that’s where this EP lands. My Dear Melancholy, is one of the most unremarkable, but still-somehow-listenable releases in recent memory.
It speaks volumes that one of the best musical features of this EP is also one of the boldest. It’s the air horn on “I Was Never There” and “Hurt You,” presumably supplied by French techno producer Gesaffelstein. It adds the tiniest note of industrial flair to the mix, infusing the two songs with an added urgency, setting them apart from the rest of the EP. Ultimately, it’s a tiny detail, though, the rest of My Dear Melancholy, is sonically inoffensive enough for me to argue that yes, it needs more air horn.
Much has been said about how My Dear Melancholy, is related to Tesfaye’s recent breakup, and the lyrics certainly don’t pull punches. But for an artist so good at getting across the passions of heartbreak and hedonism, this “passionate breakup album” is about as remarkable as vanilla sex. And just as forgettable.
Contact CU Independent Arts Writer Owen Zoll at Owen.Zoll@colorado.edu.
