Gary's The Weeknd Review

Here’s basically everything you need to know about The Weeknd. After downloading his album (for free from his website), I passed it to a friend at work. Within about four or five hours 10 other people in the office were listening to House of Balloons. By the end of the day it had been shared to another 5 or so people. It’s not that The Weeknd - aka: Abel Tesfaye - is that good. It’s that he’s so good you feel compelled to tell someone about it.

What happened at work was a microcosm of what’s happening everywhere right now - The Weeknd is blowing up!

He’s the guy everyone’s talking about, he’s featured in the promos for HBO’s Entourage and not to mention garnering a lot of record label attention (is it the 90s again?) So when he drops the line “They don’t want my love, they just want my potential” (The Party and The After Party) he could easily be referring to the many interested parties circling this 20 year old prodigy.

So what’s got everybody worked up into a lather? Some pretty sick fuckin’ music that's what.

The kind of music you listen to bleary-eyed at 4am long after the party has dried up and most people have gone home. Coincidentally this is also the subject matter of about 8 of the 9 tracks on this album.

The Weeknd deliver some dark and expansive beats - beats so big they sound like they’re echoing through an empty club (a sight I’m sure he’ll never witness). One minute your reference points are Kanye circa 808s and Heartbreaks, R Kelly and even Slick Rick. But as soon as you think you have him pegged he turns around and samples Beach House and new wave punk?

Maybe The Weeknd is a series of contradictions or maybe he just doesn’t give a shit about the musical conventions most of us live by and expect. Maybe at 20 years old he just doesn’t know better.

And while you might a expect a young man to get caught in a rut, it’s not all darkness, drugs and dirty sex. There’s some bouncier beats and tracks, like The Morning and Loft Music, the latter in which Tesfaye really puts on a verbal show somehow managing to wrap his silky smooth voice around some rough and nasty lyrics.

But that’s sort of his trick, On first listen you marvel at the vocal gymnastics, the sinister beats and uniqueness of the sound. But by the second and third listen, you really take in his lyrics and can’t decide whether your a little shocked or oddly titillated.

Either way the safest thing I can say is that you’ll definitely be hearing a lot more from The Weeknd whether he’s your Polaris Winner or not.

Standout Tracks - House of Ballons - Glass Table Girls, Loft Music, High For This