January 2022 - Music

Album of the Month - Dawn FM by The Weeknd

It’s been a few years since The Weeknd went full-on pop star. Early in his career, the Canadian crooner refused to reveal his identity and sang dark songs about sex, drugs, and longing. His seminal 2011 mixtape, House of Balloons, was like the woozy soundtrack to an endless, libidinous loop of willful couch crashing. If it seemed like there wasn’t always confidence behind his debaucherous asides — his bruised tenor favored stops and starts, brutal fits and murmurs, run-on rants — that likely was intentional, part of his overall brilliance. It was almost like he was trying to steel himself for a night of very bad decisions he was about to make over and over again.

The 16 songs on Dawn FM don’t grapple with the idea of addiction in the way we’ve come to expect from him (none of the addled “glass-table girls” of last decade’s demon time), and infidelities amount to wistful moments of vulnerability as opposed to tortured diatribes. If there’s a self-help vibe here, it’s refreshingly light and accessible — self-help for the selfie set.

“Every Angel Is Terrifying” is a Vanilla Sky-like monologue about the afterlife, whose utopian jargon (”You will enter a world beyond your imagination/A future out of control”) matches the album’s motifs, even if it ultimately slows down the momentum. But the punchy “Less Than Zero” is a sure-fire hit. Soon to be a mainstay at proms, weddings, and sweet sixteens, the soaring hook gives the co-sign to throwing caution to the wind: “‘Cause I can’t shake this feeling that’s crawling in my bed/I try to hide it but I know you know me/I try to fight it but I’d rather be free.” The Weeknd has quit his old haunts and is all the more lucid. That sense of clarity is deeply rewarding.