Hi peoples! We took a break to re-strategise and make sure we’re continuously delivering content our not-so-lil community of readers needs in their life. So this week, we’re debuting a new format for our reviews and will be launching a new feature series next week – watch out for that on Facebook and Twitter.
This week’s round-up features our reviews of Frank Ocean’s double release of Endless & Blonde, Tory Lanez’s ‘I Told You’ released same day as Endless, introducing Charlotte Day Wilson and lots more.
1. So what’s tea on Frank Ocean’s double album release – Endless & Blonde
On Friday 19 August, after months of fans waiting with bated breath and inspiring Twitter-frenzy episodes, Frank Ocean finally released Endless, his first album since 2012’s channel ORANGE. As if the world wasn’t already spinning from the surprise release, a day later on 20 August, Frank delivered yet another album, Blonde (Blond). The (music) world lost its collective mind. In many ways, coverage from critics and the wider press has focused on Blonde, but for a number of reasons, not least for completion in appreciating the product of Ocean’s four year efforts, our review will discuss both and why you should be listening to both.
Sounds like…
Minimalistic ‘alternative’ (whatever that means these days) R&B. That goes for both albums, except Endless is more unrefined, less perfect, with even barer instrumentals, sparser woozy lyrics and undefined transitions between the songs. You almost float through the album. We must also note that Endless is a ‘visual album’ of some sorts in that it’s presented with the mysterious visuals teased by Frank earlier in August of the singer in a room building ‘something’. ‘Something’ was revealed to be a staircase in Endless. The album is one 45-minute stream, making it difficult to listen to individual tracks without knowing where they start and end. Most would agree Endless’ visuals do not rival the visuals we got in Beyonce’s much talked about April release, Lemonade, but the delivery of Endless is certainly one of the most interesting album releases EVER. One for the books.
With defined tracklists (yes, plural because the physical and digital versions have slightly varied tracklists) and transitions, Blonde is the more traditional album. It’s similarly minimalist, but its hallmark is the attention Frank has paid to every moment and the way Frank’s voice, notably more powerful than on channel ORANGE, charts the listener’s course through the album. In this way, it’s an inversion of Endless where the instrumentals lead, with the vocals sitting mellowly in the background. Blonde is gospel-infused, with organ arrangements featuring throughout (as on Godspeed and Solo). Still, it maintains that melancholy, sparse downbeat feel mastered by Ocean and one of his famed collaborators, James Blake.
Speaks of…
Love, relationships gone bad, drug use, touches on Frank’s bisexuality, Trayvon Martin and his personal connection to his death, consumerism & technology, etc etc. It’s an understatement to say Frank takes on a wide range of topics on both Endless & Blonde, even if he rarely delves deep into his chosen issues. It’s here that Frank Ocean stands out amongst the pack – his incredibly poetic song-writing. No one else can represent smoking weed as romantically poetically as Frank Ocean does on Solo. The meticulously delicate, beautiful, sometimes insightful and gloriously dark lyrics of Endless and Blonde are the albums’ highlight. Take for instance the lyrics of Pink + White’s second verse:
In the wake of a hurricane
Dark skin of a summer shade
Nose dive in the flood lines
Tall tower of milk crates
It’s the same way you showed me
Cannonball off the porch side
Older kids trying off the roof
Just the same way you showed me (you showed)
If you could die and come back to life
Up for air from the swimming pool
You’d kneel down to the dry land
Kiss the Earth that birthed you
Gave you tools just to stay alive
And make it out when the sun is ruined
Early faves…
On Blonde: Pink + White, Ivy, Solo, Nikes, Godspeed
On Endless: At Your Best (You are Love), Wither, Rushes, Slide on Me
The critics are saying…
about Endless:
It’s true, [the songs] don’t feel fully formed, but there’s something quite nice about the album’s fragmentation.
– Christopher Hooton @ The Independent
You chase one moment into the next, the songs knit together by instrumentals and short vocal experiments. It’s like the back half of the Beatles’ Abbey Road. Amid these sketches and fragments, you’ll find more great lines than on Blonde, more moments that bring tears to your eyes. Endless is a tighter listening experience than Blonde, which loses momentum around “Pretty Sweet.”… Endless is meditative and hypnotizing.
– Ross Scarano @ Complex
about Blonde:
It’s easy to intellectualize the kind of soft, deliberate music found on Blonde as romantic and deep just because it feels better than calling it boring. Blonde, however, is not that. It’s layered, poignant, and thoughtful; even after five or six listens things are still revealing themselves. Though part of me wishes there were a song that broke the considered precision and just had fun
– Jake Woolf @ GQ
The power of Frank’s work often comes via extreme transparency, but he’s not writing diaries. It’s about how he’s able to locate the crux of any situation, or expose undue artifice, or peel things back to their naked core.
– Ryan Dombal @ Pitchfork
Our verdict…
Definitely one of the year’s must hears. Both Endless and Blonde feature powerful moments that showcase what we already know about Frank Ocean – he’s brilliant. His penmanship is virtually unmatched and the creativity he’s displayed with the release strategies, associated visuals and music on both albums is why he’s one of the greatest of our generation.
But we can’t quite say we feel these albums are everything we hoped for when we thought of a Frank Ocean project 4 years in the making – there doesn’t seem to be a song that took us back to that feeling ‘Thinking about you’ gave at first listen and as a whole, both, particularly Blonde, sometimes felt like momentum had been lost at points. Honest truth is that some of the songs just feel like we could’ve done without them and 1 album packed with our faves from both would’ve left us feeling a lot more inspired. But they’re both still great albums, not least because of the out-of-the-box creativity Frank Ocean blessed us with.
Read all about it…
Full reviews of Endless by The Independent and Complex
Genius.com has a full tracklist of Endless that very helpfully contains time stamps for each song displayed along the right-hand side alongside the full lyrics once you click on each song link
GQ editors debate whether Blonde lived up to the hype, Pitchfork review the album
NME’s who’s who on Frank’s Blonde collaborators and Mic.com’s on his Endless collaborators
Billboard has an interesting feature on Frank’s revolutionary business moves with the Blonde release (aka, how he epically played Universal Music Group and Def Jam)
The Fader’s complete guide to the Boys Don’t Cry zine released with Blonde
