December 2023 - Music

Album of the Month - Think Later by Tate McRae

Think Later’s lyrics stick with the aforementioned bad boyfriends, bedroom-door-slamming angst and friendship group drama (“said she had my back, but she had the knife”, “half your age, yeah you’re lookin’ at me like I’m some sweet escape”, “I just overshare ’bout things I never meant”), with a Taylor Swift-esque back-to-my-home-town narrative thrown in on Calgary. But this time, OneRepublic’s Ryan Tedder is co-executive producer and has a hand in most of the tracks; the sound is more unified, with a hefty application of cavernous reverb linking the electronic stuff and guitar-led tracks.

Sometimes this yields dividends. Greedy is exceptionally catchy, driven by a clanking earworm riff. Stay Done is a nicely written, sweetly melancholy, corporate alt-rock acoustic ballad, while the rhythm track of Hurt My Feelings feels appealingly rooted in the minimalism of the Neptunes’ early 00s productions.

But they are surrounded by a surfeit of songs that, while well made, feature melodies that always head where you’d expect – or try too hard. In its quest for immediate impact, Exes hits on a clockwork rhythm that quickly lands on the wrong side of the line that separates perky from annoying. Chunks of the album fly by making little impression: you can imagine these songs on the radio, but then huge chunks of radio fly by in the same way.

The quest for a USP doesn’t seem to have yielded a definitive answer: McRae is still fitting a lot of currently popular boxes without escaping them. There are highlights, but the overwhelming impression is of placeholder pop, filling space until something different comes along. How Tate McRae will respond when it does is anyone’s guess.