After Hours delivers on the most compelling aspects of Tesfaye’s vision leveraging a self-loathing villain into an irresistible, cinematic narrative with his most satisfying collision of new wave, dream pop, and R&B.Įven if he is singing about the same things-bacchanalian excess, loneliness as rapture, using women to rehabilitate his poor little life-the fresh vocals and production flourishes do the trick. His major-label debut Kiss Land was a languid disappointment, and Beauty Behind the Madness failed to live up to the promise made by the Trilogy tapes. In 2020, he continues to revel in high drama After Hours dives deep into the textures of pleasure, despair, and how we consciously distance ourselves from our interiors.Īfter years of attempting to bring the spectral tones of his early mixtapes to a mainstream pop format, Tesfaye finally unites his two worlds. The character he plays is an exaggerated riff on the solipsistic-hedonist persona Tesfaye has been tunneling into since his 2011 mixtape trilogy, where he first introduced listeners to his brand of brooding nihilism.

As the audience cheers, Abel Tesfaye walks backstage, his artificial smile intact, until he reaches a hallway where it fades into a frigid stare. He’s just finished a performance on Jimmy Kimmel Live! and blood crawls down the side of his bandaged nose, threatening to drip onto his suit. The Weeknd’s latest short film opens with the Toronto singer grinning maniacally onstage.

The weeknd new album reddit