Andrew Vs. “House of Balloons”/”Thursday” by The Weeknd

There are certain things a man dreads; big things such as wondering if the woman you love will accept your hand in marriage and little things like getting up from your computer to take a shit. I am confident in saying that getting myself to write this review is somewhere in the middle of that spectrum. As these opening sentences are being typed I am half-way through listening (for the third time) to the Pitchfork boner-starter, The Weeknd’s debut album (mixtape, whatever the fuck you want to call it, it was a free download) House of Balloons, and boy, am I wanting to just turn this off, listen to Halcyon Digest, and forget that I ever contemplated the existence of The Weeknd. All of what I have already written may sound harsh but that’s what this project deserves.

In concept, The Weeknd sounds slightly interesting: dark beats plus a throwback R&B vocal styling. “Oh good, maybe it will wash the taste of How To Dress Well out of my mouth.” Those turned out to be the words of a misguided human being. I was relieved that this came out because, should it be quality, it would allow me to believe that there was potential for solid R&B in the new decade. My perception of that being a possibility any longer is somewhat decimated. This technically addresses the issues that I had with How To Dress Well’s last album: better production value and less whiny-sounding. It’s not that I don’t know what I want, it’s that the execution on The Weeknd’s part was extremely poor, almost soulless in its presentation, missing out on what made R&B outfits good in the first place. This goes for both House of Balloons and the newly released mixtape Thursday.

Even in his unnecessarily cold appearance, The Weeknd also manages to infuriate me through the lyrics. Most of the songs contain those shallow, conceited, sleazy words from R&B songs of the late 90s and makes them a little harder, and by harder, I mean more use of the words “fuck” and “fuckin'”. Normally I would take that for what it was, which is the aesthetic, but in the case of how they are implemented with the music and the overwhelming cheese of it all, it’s difficult to take anything that Abel Tesfaye has written seriously. This also becomes his major downfall. If I cannot tell that this is that purposefully bad, ironic music that the independent music scene has been gushing over for the last fifteen years, that’s a problem. Then it’s just bad.

Drake, who I am also not a huge fan of, has taken the liberty to tell the world how awesome The Weeknd is. He even ended up appearing on the track “The Zone” off the newly released Thursday mixtape and ironically, it happens to be the best track The Weeknd has made thus far. For some reason this production style matches his idolizer (Drake) even more than himself and it made me grow more of an appreciation for Drake while keeping the same opinion of The Weeknd. This is where I discovered room for improvement: if Drake can take some sweet time out of his life to make Abel Tesfaye’s Weeknd outfit not suck, that would be neat. Again, I don’t like Drake so this is probably the only “two wrongs make a right” real-life application I can think of. Drake joining The Weeknd is improbable but Drake, you can keep being Drake, I don’t care.

WINNER: Andrew

WHY: The mismatched production style, generic vocal delivery and sleazy lyrics are cringeworthy but the idea of The Weeknd isn’t a bad one. The execution is just what absolutely kills these albums.