The other day, Nick was writing about his favorite venues and he mentioned The Icon, which of course was the spot back in the day. Sure I saw De La Soul and Tribe Called Quest there, and yes it was one of the first joints in Buffalo to serve Guinness on draft, but for me The Icon was it's third floor, with the reggae and old school hip-hop, and the couches and the smoke and people of various creeds and colors getting ____ed up and chilling the ____ out. That's what I think of when I listen to The Weeknd. That, and strip clubs. Not because The Weeknd is stripper music per se (although some Weeknd tracks would certainly work); rather, because The Weeknd brilliantly conjures scenes from a strip club and it's champagne rooms and a downtown world of backrooms, drugs, sex, getting ____ed up, and burning up the night...
One of the best things about 2011 absolutely was The Weeknd. Over the span of three free Internet mixtapes, Abel Tesfaye and his producers stunned listeners and critics with emotionally complex lyrics and sonically adventurous productions that immediately drew the attention of indie listeners. House of Balloons, Thursday, and Echoes of Silence became events unto themselves, while pointing to another possible future for r&b now that that genre is entirely played out, along with Frank Ocean, The Dream, and How To Dress Well. If you missed all of this (I won't hold it against you) all is not lost because The Weeknd has compiled all three mixtapes plus three new songs into a remastered and potent collection aptly entitled Trilogy that would easily be a contender for album of the year if it hadn't already been released last year.
House of Balloons starts us off in The Weeknd's midnight world with the dark and illicit "High For This," an ode to sly seduction and dangerous sex that features Tesfaye singing in his beautiful angelic falsetto "trust me girl... you wanna be high for this" to the object of his desire and to his audience. House of Balloons as an album is in fact one big vicarious seduction as The Weeknd slyly entices you to experience the dark thrills on display through the music. When not talking nasty Abel Tesfaye also proves to be a keen observer, wryly describing the particulars of the back room at a strip club in "House of Balloons/Glass Table Girls" and bleary AM scenes when the night's earnings/losses get counted in "The Morning." Best of all, the characters that stock these seamy tableaus are in touch with their tortured emotions, adding a little British New Wave anguish to the post r&b proceedings which already benefit from favoring Beach House and Siouxsie & The Banshees samples, trip-hop, and indie electronics over the now stale ass r&b tropes that have buried the genre. Yes, Tesfaye's tasty falsetto and phrasing is perfect, perfect r&b, but The Weeknd's House of Balloons and the rest of Trilogy is something new.
Thursday, the second installment should have been the runt of the litter and the one that should've scuttled the whole enterprise but like everything else about Trilogy it satisfyingly defied expectations. Trading the midnight champagne room milieu of House of Balloons for the hazy late night/early morning dreamworld of after hours parties and what happens when the lights go up, Thursday takes things further lyrically and musically. The exceedingly chilled out vibe of House of Balloons begins to take on an even darker hue on Thursday as grinding guitar samples and jittery electronics give the album an anxious teeth gnashing quality that goes perfectly with the late late after hours scenes and emotional wreckage and recriminations on display.
Echoes of Silence, the final installment of Trilogy serves as The Weeknd's graduate thesis, mature and fascinatingly divergent from House of Balloons as it embraces electronic minimalism while jettisoning the samples and traditional r&b structures that the first two parts played with while the sleaziness and emotional tumult crescendos and climaxes. After a properly louche and rough and tumble cover of Michael Jackson's "Dirty Diana," Silence quickly gets down to the nitty gritty on blistering cuts like "XO," "The Fall," and "Echoes of Silence" that showcases Tesfaye's unflinchingly blunt lyrical honesty, in stark contrast to the juvenile cheese wiz of contemporary r&b. It's a sublime closing argument.
While I'll always remember those deliciously mysterious mp3's downloaded off of the Interwebs, the remixed and remastered Trilogy successfully polishes up and adds heft to an already aurally satisfying experience, and the three new songs included to round things out pleasingly prove that The Weeknd has way more up his/their sleeve. For people who missed out on The Weeknd last year, you are in for a profound, glorious treat, even if Trilogy isn't strictly speaking a triple album. Instead, Trilogy is three brilliant albums for the price of one, something new, and one hell of an introduction to a protean talent who's only getting started.
Rating: A
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