This connection to places can be observed throughout the album, but comes across most blatantly in ‘Escape From LA’, where he expresses disenchantment with his relationship as associated with the materialist Los Angeles lifestyle (“Gave you everything you wanted / But none of that matters to you”). The song is brooding and retrospective, and addresses his struggles with fame while geographically anchoring his melancholy (“Cali was the mission, but now a n**** leaving”). Tesfaye recalls his Ontario upbringing and dreams that came true in ‘Snowchild’, but what initially appears to be braggadocio soon reveals itself as melancholy. The next four tracks are a moment of deep despair and relapse.
‘Hardest To Love’ freshly explores the genre of drum and bass and is aided well by Swedish co-producers Max Martin and Oscar Holter, and the Elton John-interpolating ‘Scared To Live’ is Tesfaye’s most bittersweet ballad to date (“I’m the reason you forgot to love / So don’t be scared to live again”). This transitions into ‘Too Late’, where he concedes, through distorted vocals, “I made mistakes, I did you wrong, baby”. On ‘Alone Again’, the album opener, he pleads, “Call me up and I’ll send for you / Take me down to your altitude”, with reference to his heavy drug use, a theme that permeates much of his music. This is where Tesfaye admits fault with regards to a failed relationship and expresses deep regret at partaking in his own vices. Tracks one to four are the emotional centre of the album. After Hours is never superfluous, and essentially functions as a concept album that can be divided into four “phases”, each possessing their own common qualities while serving the album’s overarching viscerally complex narrative. Tesfaye dismisses the fillers on his latest project, crafting a cohesive record that flows gracefully from one song to the next.
Beauty Behind the Madness was an experimentation that saw him attempting to navigate the tricky boundaries between artistic integrity and mainstream success, eventually scrapping the former altogether with Starboy, an oversaturated pop and trap album that was overlong and relied on way too many filler tracks. On After Hours, Tesfaye sounds more assured in his songwriting abilities, engaging critically and introspectively with his own sense of self, something lacking in many of his past works.
The album is a sonic journey of mellow dream pop and dark wave music, incorporating the use of synthesisers for a nu-disco sound that perfects what he set out to achieve on 2016’s Starboy, without inundating the album’s moody feel. The album marks a return to his signature dark sound, recalling his earlier projects such as the Trilogy mixtapes and 2013’s Kiss Land, but the Toronto native develops it even further by exploring new textures. Abel Tesfaye, better known by his stage-name The Weeknd, returned Friday with his highly anticipated fourth studio LP, After Hours.
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