The Weeknd -- Trilogy
Trilogy: 8/10
The Mixtapes As a Trilogy: 9/10
House of Balloons Mixtape: 10/10
House of Balloons Trilogy Version: 9/10
Thursday Mixtape: 9/10
Thursday Trilogy Version: 8/10
Echoes of Silence Mixtape: 8/10
Echoes of Silence Trilogy Version: 8/10
2012 XO/Republic
Disc One: House of Balloons
Since Trilogy has been released in several different forms, and is the only Weeknd
release I really care about (though After Hours has been growing on me), I'll break down each of the three parts, and
compare their original 2011 independent (and free) releases with the versions found on
this 2012 compilation. First up, I'll tackle the original mixtapes.
House of Balloons
In the spring of 2011, scrolling music website headlines, I saw that some mysterious, unknown artist had released a song called "What You Need." I listened and grew immediately excited because the song absolutely nailed the dark vibe of 90's triphop, particularly that of Portishead, even better than the album Portishead had released three years before, in 2008 (which is amazing, but does something musically different than that band's 90's work). "What You Need" starts with a freaky, haunted Aayliah sample, before coming in harder with a beat and a thick, distorted electronic piano. Then this guy starts singing in this high, mysterious, creepy voice, and it's like it's 2 am, and you looked out the window and saw someone just turned on a dim fluorescent on a top floor skyscraper luxury loft everyone thought was abandoned. It's like you slept in a shopping mall that got closed up after Y2K, and were awakened in the middle of the night by this music coming through the mall's old intercom speakers. It's a ghostly mood, an atmosphere, a dark, and frightening, and strangely comforting vibe, and it is rare and precious. After finding this track, I saw that its creator, a faceless entity, calling himself The Weeknd, had released two other songs, both which measured up to "What You Need." Late that March, The Weeknd self-released a nine-track album, which included all three of the previously released songs, titled House of Balloons. He released House of Balloons for free--the best free album since Radiohead's In Rainbows, four years before (which was technically "pay what you want."). House of Balloons magically maintains "What You Need"'s vibe over the entire course of its 50-minutes, with the anonymous singer spewing lyrics that can best be described as vile, highlighting drug-fueled trysts, self-loathing, wild nights no participants will have the physical ability to remember, and isolation and alienation. The cohesion of this dark musical world was, and still is stunning, especially considering the Weeknd, soon revealed to be as a young Canadian artist named Abel Tesfaye, has never been able to create anything on its level since. This is music to listen to alone, late at night, in a darkened room, with only your thoughts, preferably negative ones. It is my kind of jam, even though the actual physical events being described in the lyrics are the exact literal opposite of lyrics describing my actual life. Much credit must go to producers, Illangelo and Doc McKinney, who keep this sound interesting, diverse, and cohesive, while pulling off some surprising changes of pace in some of the longer songs. The sequencing is also incredible, as the album feels like it tells a complete emotional story. This is a forgotten classic in the discography of one of the 21st century's best-selling artists, a document which proves that before he created a bunch of pop music that I don't care for, Abel Tesfaye was a true artist and an enigma. Actually, maybe he still is an enigma.
Thursday
After building considerable and much-deserved hype for House of Balloons, Tesfaye somehow managed to remain mysterious, even after collaborating with Drake that summer of 2011. However, House of Balloons was hyped as the first part in a trilogy, building considerable interest in a follow-up. That follow-up came just five months after House of Balloons' release, with Thursday. Personally, I was having a pretty epic year, probably doing more traveling than I've ever done, going to Chicago with my best friend that February and Minnesota that August, while also taking my wife and then one-year-old son on trips to San Antonio and Perdido Key. I was having a personal renaissance, based on the mantra "things can stay good," which dispelled a previous dark personal belief I believe I inherited from the works of Joss Whedon, as well as the cult I grew up in "every time things are good, it means a downfall is coming." I was enjoying life to the max for the last year of my 20's (I hit 30 before the year ended), and the Weeknd's ascendance gave me some great music to soundtrack it (there was a lot of great music that year!). With that said, Thursday isn't as good as House of Balloons. It has higher highs, but lower valleys--none of which come in the form of bad songs, just "less good" ones. I will gladly begin with the highs. After the merely decent first two songs, the title track comes rolling along like a slow, inescapable current of sound you want to drown in. It's the full realization of what The Weeknd can be. As a distorted keyboard plays the song's recurring motif, a huge bassline comes in, then a beat that might as well just last forever. The song features swirling eddies of melodies over its force of nature rhythm, creating a trip-hop paradise that's only eclipsed immediately by the next song, "The Zone." The beat and bass here are even more captivating. They're like an infected, endless heartbeat, and again, I'd be fine if they went on forever. Tesfaye's vocals echo on top of each other over his main melody and a sexy, reverbed guitar, and it's all so insanely good, when Drake's surprise rap verse kicks in in the final third, it just feels like lagniappe. That song's attitude is defiant, and Tesfaye sounds invincible. "I'm gonna lean till I fall/and I don't give a damn/I've felt the ground before," he sings, as he tries to find some way to make love to the woman who's just arrived--even though she isn't the one he wants ("I'll be making love to her through you/so let me keep my eyes closed"), and he can't even feel the lower half of his body enough to stand. It's so damn messed up, and this guy needs professional help, but WOW is this music fantastic. The third standout moment comes on "Gone," a slow as molasses, beat-reliant track, detailing just how tripped out Abel is, which rather stunningly feeds in the faster tempo'd acoustic-guitar track, "Rolling Stone," before Thursday ends with "Heaven or Las Vegas." Overall, Tesfaye and the producers do another great job of keeping a cohesive vibe throughout, as well as creating another full emotional arc. The album ends with that perfect middle part of a trilogy that's building up to a finale vibe, as Tesfaye's seems to be moving his faded dreamscape to Vegas. Overall, though, while House of Balloons is able to keep up its incredible quality from start to finish, Thursday hinges from very good, to beyond incredible. So while Thursday is not as satisfying a total listen as its predecessor, I find myself coming back to it more often than I do any of the other trilogy volumes because of "Thursday," "The Zone," and "Gone."
Echoes of Silence
Music fans, and THIS MUSIC FAN in particular, had quite a lot of anticipation building up to Echoes of Silence, the third and final volume in Tesfaye's free 2011 mixtape trilogy. I remember once late November came around, I was checking Internet music news sites every day to see if it had been dropped. I even had a lingering fear that it wouldn't. At one point, the cover and purported tracklist leaked, and while they ended up being fake, the pretend tracklist ended up being far more imaginative than the real one. The last three track titles listed were "Sleep Paralysis," "Witches and Panthers," and "Overdose," which not only sounded perfect, but like I actually wrote them. That fall was pretty magical for me, with life being good, and LSU's football team almost having the greatest season ever, led by Heisman candidate defensive back, Tyrann "The Honey Badger" Matheiu." My family even moved out to my homeland, in the Louisiana countryside. Unfortunately, the tracklist was fake, LSU lost to Alabama in an embarrassing fashion in a National Championship rematch, the Honey Badger got kicked off the team for smoking too much weed (he seemed the personification of the trilogy character), and my family eventually moved right back to the city. Huh. What could have been. Anyway, the real Echoes of Silence dropped in late December, the week we moved, and I found myself listening to it a lot on late night drives to the country, my car packed to the roof with boxes. Echoes of Silence kicks off with an unexpected cover of the Michael Jackson song "Dirty Diana," aka "D.D." This immediately hints at Tesfaye's future pop aspirations, though thankfully, the album immediately goes into trademarked trilogy territory, with the excellent atmospheric and trippy one-two punch of "Montreal" and "Outside." "XO/The Host" picks up the pace, with Tesfaye really laying into the woman seemingly on the other side of the trilogy's troubled, central relationship....before the seven-minute song suddenly becomes slow and evil halfway through, building to the terrifying "Initiation." "Initiation" fulfills a lot of the trilogy's story and themes--Tesfaye is a rising star, and the girl who's been playing around with him up to this point suddenly seems more interested because of his newfound fame. His response is "I got a test for you/you say you want my heart/Well, baby, you can have it all/there's just something I need from you: it's to meet my boys." His boys are illicit substances, and Tesfaye's voice goes on a constant roller-coaster of pitch-shifts to mimic the feeling of coming up and down on narcotics and booze. It's a scary song, with freaky noises poking their heads in like someone opening a door, realizing something's going on in the room they don't want to know about, and shutting it. This is really the last time in his career Tesfaye ever sounded this menacing or scary, as the song is the climax of the trilogy, and Tesfaye's exciting 2011. I hate to say it...but it's all downhill from here. Thankfully, though, the Weeknd stays pretty close to the peak for the rest of Echoes of Silence. The chill "Same Old Song" features a more resigned Weeknd, who seems to be suddenly taking some kind of high ground over the person who's been hurting him, positing himself as a loner who's already been through so much stuff, nobody can hurt him by leaving him. The song then ends with a goofy Juicy J riff about going to the club, which doesn't fit with anything. The more resigned, muted, but strangely defiant Weeknd continues with "The Fall" and "Next," which most definitely gives the feeling that the end is coming--at this point, the Weeknd is even complaining about having to take drugs. The entire trilogy then comes to a close with "Echoes of Silence," which is...a piano ballad? Well, it's the end of the three album's messed up central relationship, and it feels very final. It's a solid ending. However, its more traditional musical leanings hint at the much more traditional pop music career Tesfaye would pursue afterward. He'd become the world's biggest pop star, and a Super Bowl halftime performer. It's probably what he always wanted, and good for him. He'd never again inhabit the frankly gross and disgusting character who's at the center of this trilogy. Unfortunately, though, that's the Weeknd I like. I've got one more Weeknd review, where I quickly realize this guy's music is not what I thought it was going to be.
And now on the "Trilogy" 2012 Official Release:
House of Balloons
In the spring of 2011, scrolling music website headlines, I saw that some mysterious, unknown artist had released a song called "What You Need." I listened and grew immediately excited because the song absolutely nailed the dark vibe of 90's triphop, particularly that of Portishead, even better than the album Portishead had released three years before, in 2008 (which is amazing, but does something musically different than that band's 90's work). "What You Need" starts with a freaky, haunted Aayliah sample, before coming in harder with a beat and a thick, distorted electronic piano. Then this guy starts singing in this high, mysterious, creepy voice, and it's like it's 2 am, and you looked out the window and saw someone just turned on a dim fluorescent on a top floor skyscraper luxury loft everyone thought was abandoned. It's like you slept in a shopping mall that got closed up after Y2K, and were awakened in the middle of the night by this music coming through the mall's old intercom speakers. It's a ghostly mood, an atmosphere, a dark, and frightening, and strangely comforting vibe, and it is rare and precious. After finding this track, I saw that its creator, a faceless entity, calling himself The Weeknd, had released two other songs, both which measured up to "What You Need." Late that March, The Weeknd self-released a nine-track album, which included all three of the previously released songs, titled House of Balloons. He released House of Balloons for free--the best free album since Radiohead's In Rainbows, four years before (which was technically "pay what you want."). House of Balloons magically maintains "What You Need"'s vibe over the entire course of its 50-minutes, with the anonymous singer spewing lyrics that can best be described as vile, highlighting drug-fueled trysts, self-loathing, wild nights no participants will have the physical ability to remember, and isolation and alienation. The cohesion of this dark musical world was, and still is stunning, especially considering the Weeknd, soon revealed to be as a young Canadian artist named Abel Tesfaye, has never been able to create anything on its level since. This is music to listen to alone, late at night, in a darkened room, with only your thoughts, preferably negative ones. It is my kind of jam, even though the actual physical events being described in the lyrics are the exact literal opposite of lyrics describing my actual life. Much credit must go to producers, Illangelo and Doc McKinney, who keep this sound interesting, diverse, and cohesive, while pulling off some surprising changes of pace in some of the longer songs. The sequencing is also incredible, as the album feels like it tells a complete emotional story. This is a forgotten classic in the discography of one of the 21st century's best-selling artists, a document which proves that before he created a bunch of pop music that I don't care for, Abel Tesfaye was a true artist and an enigma. Actually, maybe he still is an enigma.
Thursday
After building considerable and much-deserved hype for House of Balloons, Tesfaye somehow managed to remain mysterious, even after collaborating with Drake that summer of 2011. However, House of Balloons was hyped as the first part in a trilogy, building considerable interest in a follow-up. That follow-up came just five months after House of Balloons' release, with Thursday. Personally, I was having a pretty epic year, probably doing more traveling than I've ever done, going to Chicago with my best friend that February and Minnesota that August, while also taking my wife and then one-year-old son on trips to San Antonio and Perdido Key. I was having a personal renaissance, based on the mantra "things can stay good," which dispelled a previous dark personal belief I believe I inherited from the works of Joss Whedon, as well as the cult I grew up in "every time things are good, it means a downfall is coming." I was enjoying life to the max for the last year of my 20's (I hit 30 before the year ended), and the Weeknd's ascendance gave me some great music to soundtrack it (there was a lot of great music that year!). With that said, Thursday isn't as good as House of Balloons. It has higher highs, but lower valleys--none of which come in the form of bad songs, just "less good" ones. I will gladly begin with the highs. After the merely decent first two songs, the title track comes rolling along like a slow, inescapable current of sound you want to drown in. It's the full realization of what The Weeknd can be. As a distorted keyboard plays the song's recurring motif, a huge bassline comes in, then a beat that might as well just last forever. The song features swirling eddies of melodies over its force of nature rhythm, creating a trip-hop paradise that's only eclipsed immediately by the next song, "The Zone." The beat and bass here are even more captivating. They're like an infected, endless heartbeat, and again, I'd be fine if they went on forever. Tesfaye's vocals echo on top of each other over his main melody and a sexy, reverbed guitar, and it's all so insanely good, when Drake's surprise rap verse kicks in in the final third, it just feels like lagniappe. That song's attitude is defiant, and Tesfaye sounds invincible. "I'm gonna lean till I fall/and I don't give a damn/I've felt the ground before," he sings, as he tries to find some way to make love to the woman who's just arrived--even though she isn't the one he wants ("I'll be making love to her through you/so let me keep my eyes closed"), and he can't even feel the lower half of his body enough to stand. It's so damn messed up, and this guy needs professional help, but WOW is this music fantastic. The third standout moment comes on "Gone," a slow as molasses, beat-reliant track, detailing just how tripped out Abel is, which rather stunningly feeds in the faster tempo'd acoustic-guitar track, "Rolling Stone," before Thursday ends with "Heaven or Las Vegas." Overall, Tesfaye and the producers do another great job of keeping a cohesive vibe throughout, as well as creating another full emotional arc. The album ends with that perfect middle part of a trilogy that's building up to a finale vibe, as Tesfaye's seems to be moving his faded dreamscape to Vegas. Overall, though, while House of Balloons is able to keep up its incredible quality from start to finish, Thursday hinges from very good, to beyond incredible. So while Thursday is not as satisfying a total listen as its predecessor, I find myself coming back to it more often than I do any of the other trilogy volumes because of "Thursday," "The Zone," and "Gone."
Echoes of Silence
Music fans, and THIS MUSIC FAN in particular, had quite a lot of anticipation building up to Echoes of Silence, the third and final volume in Tesfaye's free 2011 mixtape trilogy. I remember once late November came around, I was checking Internet music news sites every day to see if it had been dropped. I even had a lingering fear that it wouldn't. At one point, the cover and purported tracklist leaked, and while they ended up being fake, the pretend tracklist ended up being far more imaginative than the real one. The last three track titles listed were "Sleep Paralysis," "Witches and Panthers," and "Overdose," which not only sounded perfect, but like I actually wrote them. That fall was pretty magical for me, with life being good, and LSU's football team almost having the greatest season ever, led by Heisman candidate defensive back, Tyrann "The Honey Badger" Matheiu." My family even moved out to my homeland, in the Louisiana countryside. Unfortunately, the tracklist was fake, LSU lost to Alabama in an embarrassing fashion in a National Championship rematch, the Honey Badger got kicked off the team for smoking too much weed (he seemed the personification of the trilogy character), and my family eventually moved right back to the city. Huh. What could have been. Anyway, the real Echoes of Silence dropped in late December, the week we moved, and I found myself listening to it a lot on late night drives to the country, my car packed to the roof with boxes. Echoes of Silence kicks off with an unexpected cover of the Michael Jackson song "Dirty Diana," aka "D.D." This immediately hints at Tesfaye's future pop aspirations, though thankfully, the album immediately goes into trademarked trilogy territory, with the excellent atmospheric and trippy one-two punch of "Montreal" and "Outside." "XO/The Host" picks up the pace, with Tesfaye really laying into the woman seemingly on the other side of the trilogy's troubled, central relationship....before the seven-minute song suddenly becomes slow and evil halfway through, building to the terrifying "Initiation." "Initiation" fulfills a lot of the trilogy's story and themes--Tesfaye is a rising star, and the girl who's been playing around with him up to this point suddenly seems more interested because of his newfound fame. His response is "I got a test for you/you say you want my heart/Well, baby, you can have it all/there's just something I need from you: it's to meet my boys." His boys are illicit substances, and Tesfaye's voice goes on a constant roller-coaster of pitch-shifts to mimic the feeling of coming up and down on narcotics and booze. It's a scary song, with freaky noises poking their heads in like someone opening a door, realizing something's going on in the room they don't want to know about, and shutting it. This is really the last time in his career Tesfaye ever sounded this menacing or scary, as the song is the climax of the trilogy, and Tesfaye's exciting 2011. I hate to say it...but it's all downhill from here. Thankfully, though, the Weeknd stays pretty close to the peak for the rest of Echoes of Silence. The chill "Same Old Song" features a more resigned Weeknd, who seems to be suddenly taking some kind of high ground over the person who's been hurting him, positing himself as a loner who's already been through so much stuff, nobody can hurt him by leaving him. The song then ends with a goofy Juicy J riff about going to the club, which doesn't fit with anything. The more resigned, muted, but strangely defiant Weeknd continues with "The Fall" and "Next," which most definitely gives the feeling that the end is coming--at this point, the Weeknd is even complaining about having to take drugs. The entire trilogy then comes to a close with "Echoes of Silence," which is...a piano ballad? Well, it's the end of the three album's messed up central relationship, and it feels very final. It's a solid ending. However, its more traditional musical leanings hint at the much more traditional pop music career Tesfaye would pursue afterward. He'd become the world's biggest pop star, and a Super Bowl halftime performer. It's probably what he always wanted, and good for him. He'd never again inhabit the frankly gross and disgusting character who's at the center of this trilogy. Unfortunately, though, that's the Weeknd I like. I've got one more Weeknd review, where I quickly realize this guy's music is not what I thought it was going to be.
And now on the "Trilogy" 2012 Official Release:
It subtracts the Aayliah sample from House of Balloons "What You Need." That was
probably the most important sample on the album for setting the atmosphere. It's
a bummer that they were able to keep every sample over this trilogy but that
one. Each of the three volumes here also features one extra track each at the end. Outside of Echoes of Silence's "Til Dawn (Here Comes the Sun)," these bonus tracks destroy the emotional arc of each volume, not
fitting their tones. These bonus songs are even mixed much louder than the original songs for some
reason. I know they were just added to give some additional value for those who
already had the free-released "mixtape" versions, but all I really wanted was a
hard copy of those mixtapes with legit artwork. I didn't need these lousy extra songs.
They knock a whole point off the whole thing. So... If you can find the original
versions of these, they're the best. The Weekend just re-released House of
Balloons on Spotify (with a boob edited out of the cover) in its original
version. Hopefully, he'll do the same for the other two, though Balloons
benefits the most by being presented in its original form.
I had a special time reviewing these, as I approach the close
of this review series, considering these mixtapes were released throughout and so integral
to my musical life the year I actually started this series full of run-on sentences. Cool.
2012 XO/Republic
Disc One: House of Balloons
1. High for This 4:07
2. What You Need 3:16
3. House of Balloons / Glass Table Girls 6:47
4. The Morning 5:15
5. Wicked Games 5:24
6. The Party & the After Party 7:39
7. Coming Down 4:55
8. Loft Music 6:04
9. The Knowing 5:41
10. Twenty Eight (bonus track; not on original mixtape) 4:18
Disc Two: Thursday
1. Lonely Star 5:49
2. Life of the Party 4:57
3. Thursday 5:19
4. The Zone (featuring Drake) 6:58
5. The Birds, Pt. 1 3:34
6. The Birds, Pt. 2 5:50
7. Gone 8:07
8. Rolling Stone 3:50
9. Heaven or Las Vegas 5:53
10. Valerie (bonus track; not on original mixtape) 4:46
Disc Three: Echoes of Silence
1. D.D. (Michael Jackson cover) 4:35
2. Montreal 4:10
3. Outside 4:20
4. XO / The Host 7:23
5. Initiation 4:20
6. Same Old Song (featuring Juicy J) 5:12
7. The Fall 5:45
8. Next 6:00
9. Echoes of Silence4:02
10. Till Dawn (Here Comes the Sun) (bonus track; not on original mixtape) 5:19
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