“Kiss Land,” the debut album from the elusive artist Abel Tesfaye (known by his stage name The Weeknd) is an unconventionally dark, brooding and all-too-real take on the redundancies of young adulthood. Straying from an overdone glamorization of a wild night out, Tesfaye zeroes in on the nuances of a party-hard lifestyle and brings to light the seedier sides of sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll.
Glaringly different from the mainstream, Tesfaye’s album rose to fame. Overall, Tesfaye avoids commercial marketing, dealing with the press or signing with a major label and is rarely seen outside of his native Toronto. Despite these reservations, the artist has been actively producing his brand of music since 2010, releasing a trio of highly acclaimed album quality mixtapes on the internet for free. Tesfaye simply lets his music speak for himself, and a quickly growing fan base is drawing the reclusive artist out of hiding. Tesfaye has begun touring and has signed with Republic Records in conjunction with his own XO label to release “Kiss Land,” his first studio backed album.
The tone of the album is set perfectly by the opening track “Professional.” This song serves as a bridge for the artist to connect his past obscurity with his new-found place in the lime light. “So you’re somebody now, but what’s a somebody in a nobody town?” croons Tesfaye, as he explores the shallowness of the fame he now finds himself in while drawing parallels to others who are lost in the big lights of a surreal city.
In the track titled “The Town” Tesfaye explores the fallout of love lost, while in the track “Adaptation” Tesfaye questions the party lifestyle with poignant rhymes. “Adapted to these models who’s adapted to the bottle/ They take it down like water just to burn away their sorrows/ I’ll stay up till tomorrow just to tear down all their morals/All is fair in love and war, she’s pure,” sings Tesfaye, who consistently questions the how and why surrounding the anecdotal moments referenced throughout the album.
“Love In The Sky” is the stand out slow jam, a mix of lust and eroticism portrayed through metaphors, while “Belong To The World” is a ballad about falling in love with a person who one can’t have.
The track “Live For” is the most dramatic departure from the overall tone of the album, allowing Tesfaye to express a little selfish indulgence in being a star. It also features the only guest artist appearance on the album from another Toronto native, Drake. “Wanderlust” is the most commercially favorable song off the album, a funk-inspired dance track that’s followed by the eponymous track “Kiss Land,” which is an open look at active heartbreaking by a world weary traveler. “Pretty” and “Tears In The Rain” round out the album, continuing the themes of abusive love, the anxieties of fame and loneliness.
Tesfaye sings with a pained passion, consistently hitting his high notes with an equally high pitch, drawing multiple stylistic parallels to 80s R&B icons Michael Jackson and Prince. His voice is matched well with the music, which builds with the varying emotions he is able to portray. Tracks start slow and calm and become fast and hectic, with beats and drops hitting their crescendos in tune with the intensity of Tesfaye’s singing. The music brings a crisp, clean and bass-heavy sound that is in direct contrast to Tesfaye’s glass-breaking pitch; surprisingly, a strange, hypnotic harmony is found when the two are put together.
“Kiss Land” is an album that is less about the night out and more about dealing with the morning after. It’s a melancholy look at the things many people look forward to on the weekend, and an unflinching understanding of the fallout they inevitably have to deal with.
Rating: 3.5/5 stars
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Follow Chirag Patel on Twitter: @cbpatel86
As published in the Sept. 12 issue of the Pepperdine Graphic.
