He was your not-so-friendly tour guide through a nihilistic underworld of hard drugs and illicit sex, soundtracked by hip samples and avant-garde production that cast his tales of doomed hedonism as glamorous pop noir. On those releases, Tesfaye pioneered a breed of dark and artsy R&B that sounded like it was descending into hell, Requiem For A Dream style. Most of My Dear Melancholy consists of shadowy slow jams that evoke the mood of his early mixtape trilogy. It occasionally feints at the gold-plated, silver-tongued pop music that has made him an unlikely mainstay on top-40 radio in recent years - two tracks feel like blurry recollections of previous Weeknd hits - but its sound calls back to a time before he was duetting with Ariana Grande.
How many A-list pop stars could drum up anticipation for their spotlight moment at young America’s foremost corporate bacchanal with a release as unwelcoming as My Dear Melancholy, Tesfaye’s latest “project” as the Weeknd, and be completely on-brand? How many could serve up such a downer and reasonably expect the kids to turn up?Ī small batch of zonked-out dirges and low-key dance tracks suited for the final hours before sunrise, My Dear Melancholy (I’m not including the comma at the end of the title because it drives me nuts) exists almost entirely within the wheelhouse Tesfaye built throughout the Weeknd’s underground rise early this decade.
Viewed one way, it’s a pretty impressive flex: You’re about to headline Coachella, and this is what you drop?Ĭredit Abel Tesfaye for aesthetic mastery if nothing else.
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