Springsteen once said, “god help the man who doubts what he is certain of” and that might well be the defining attitude I have to music criticism. I change my mind. And I get it wrong. Now tthat comes with the territor, when you are reviewing an album the day after you heard it from the first time, there is always the chance it needs more time.
So I will listen again and I will read other opinions and try and hear what they hear, attune my ears to the album, consider the options, and sometimes I will definitely revise my opinion. That is one of the pleasures of writing so much, you can always back track on yourself.
But what happens when three succesful performers, in similar idoms (that you actually love) don’t do it for you? Maybe it’s you? Or them? Or everybody else.
This year the Weeknd, Frank Ocean and Miguel are three semi-experimental modern r&b guys mining a distractedly downbeat synth sound that would be Goth only there isn’t a guitar in sight and their entanglements is the horror of the banaility of lurve, I didn’t really like very much.
The problem for me on all three is there melodies are non-existent and their tracks are depressing. I saw Frank Ocean at T5 and he was okay, nothing great, this is an r&b singer who works with my buddies Odd Futire, and added the chorus to Tyler’s masterful “She” –debatably the best song of 2011, but I can’t take the sort of harmolidic bending of the melody lines., and while his voice is lovely and his range quite amazing, he is insufferable moody. I didn’t like his debut album Channel Orange when he first came out and I do like it more now but I don’t like it much more.
Miguel is Frank Ocean for morons. He claims some hefty influences but I can’t hear them, what I can hear on his second album Kaleidoscopic Dreams is really iffy r&b songs, not one of which catches the ear. Just like Ocean, the songs feel half formed and here I have to wonder, is it them or is it me? Perhaps I am such a Motown lover that if it isn’t based around a tune, If it is based around a beat, or if it is all blue keys and monotones, I am not quie hearing it correctly.
Both of these guys, and the third one here, Abel Tesfaye (aka the Weeknd). Abel’s debut album Trilogy, essentially his first three mix tapes plus a handful of new songs, has been met with rapture but it sounds just like the other two to my ears. Ocean is a better singer, Miguel the one with the best chance of crossing over, and the Weeknd? The most nondescript. All these songs and all these hours wasted and I don’t like any of them.
It must be me, right?