album review: 'dawn fm' by the weeknd

So here’s a question with no easy answer: what do people want in a new project from The Weeknd?

Now you might think this is straightforward, especially coming off of his pop crossover moments in the past five or so years: give us all great synthpop and we’ll be fine, especially if you can keep the creepy, darker R&B along the way; if the grooves and hooks are good, nobody will care that much. But I don’t think that’s an answer that works for The Weeknd if you take his larger catalog and increasingly splintered fanbase into account, to say nothing of his broader interests beyond just 80s synthpop revivalism. For one, his fondness for R&B of multiple decades especially when paired with disco can lead to a traditionalist streak, which flies in the face of the rougher, borderline gothic darkwave textures that have existed in his sound since the mixtapes. And I think you’d be remiss to ignore his electronic leanings, as he works with Gesaffelstein and especially Oneohtrix Point Never in recent years.

And I bring that up specifically because a lot of folks probably don’t remember The Weeknd’s uncredited collaboration with Daniel Lopatin on Magic Oneohtrix Point Never for the excellent song ‘No Nightmares’, that dropped in late 2020, an album that embraced a quasi-surreal radio program structure that all the buzz was suggesting The Weeknd was attempting as well with this project, narrated in part by Jim Carrey of all people. But the promotion also seemed to imply dabblings in 80s darkwave and even dream pop, and while this isn’t surprising given The Weeknd has sampled Beach House and the Cocteau Twins going back to House Of Balloons, to say nothing of his early involvement in the goth scene in Toronto and Montreal, the choice to get weirder and more eccentric coming off of After Hours is a risk, even if it’s well-calculated. And to be honest, I wasn’t sure how well it would work - yes, The Weeknd has never been better in composing synthpop, but it’s always been a little mixed whenever he’s tried to triangulate his varied interests, to say nothing of whether people actually embrace them; I mean, I still think ‘False Alarm’ from Starboy is one of the best songs he’s ever made with its raw, rough darkwave… but try telling his fans that outside of the niche audience.

In any case, while I was intrigued for Dawn FM, I was also cautious in thinking that it might not work at all, especially given that ‘Take My Breath’ felt like a bit of a retread as an early single. Maybe it would be the darkwave revival a few dozen of us wanted, maybe it’d be something more out there than that - so tuning into Dawn FM, what did we get?

Well, funnily enough we got an album that challenges anyone who’s asking what we might want from The Weeknd, because at least on the surface, it’s easy to argue that this is a more consistent, streamlined, conceptual, and even mature album. It’s sleek, it’s polished to a fault, it’s a little experimental but also accessible in its tones and presentation, drawing on influences that should make it the easiest of sells… and yet I’m not sure it works for me. And it has me grateful that I’m not adding scores to album reviews anymore, because when you untangle the open questions of expectation and execution, this is not an album that makes for easy analysis, especially when it seems to do so much right… but doesn’t stick the landing.

Now granted, I’m not sure a defined ‘landing’ was ever in the cards for Dawn FM, because the best word to describe this project is ‘transitional’, and that’s apparent in the content very quickly, so let’s start there. The Weeknd has described the project as an adult contemporary radio station playing through a period of purgatory in the scant few moments before you go towards the light, the last moments of reflection what you’ve done and where you are before the end. I want to stress that for as much as folks have fawned over the concept and idea of the project, it’s not new - I can reference Oneohtrix Point Never’s last album with its hazy radio station framing where The Weeknd was actually on it, but the ‘life flashing before your eyes’ at the end is a common framing device, even in music, with Jim Carrey as a narrator who honestly does not contribute as much as you’d expect. And it makes sense that The Weeknd would use this framing device, as it sets up the emotional arc of the album which is similar but subtly different than his last few: it starts out a wallow in nihilism and self-destructive impulses, to get enticed back to giving love another chance again by a mysterious figure… and it ultimately doesn’t work. But what gets interesting is placing this in context with the details and previous arcs The Weeknd has explored - Beauty Behind The Madness had him let her go because it didn’t work and he hadn’t gotten over his vices, Starboy had him actually trying to embrace love, albeit with the first snippets of realization that his vices will drag him away from a full connection, which proved abundantly true across every regretful and searching moment of After Hours that left him bleeding out by the end, which is a natural segway into this album. What’s interesting with Dawn FM is that it’s probably the first album where you can tell The Weeknd has shaken himself mostly free of his vices and seems to be at least trying to do the work of repair and introspection - the conflict on this album is internal and emotional, where after the opening few songs these are probably the most sincere, considered, and mature love songs The Weeknd has ever written. And with him now trying to be a better person and buck against nihilism, it makes the album kind of fascinating as he encounters women who might be cheating or playing games or who are as broken as he is, and there’s a lot of regret that comes with his past and how to some, it’s going to be too much baggage to handle, especially the old flames that haven’t quite died out. And that’s one reason in theory why the ending of this album really works - he might be alone yet again as she leaves on ‘Less Than Zero’, but he’s made peace with himself and what he wants and his capacity for love, beating nihilism in finding meaning, best summarized in the closing monologue from Carrey that is flat out excellent.

But note that I said ‘in theory’, because this is where I start to have some problems with the project and let’s start in the writing. I highlighted this back when I reviewed Starboy five and a half years ago and it’s a question I’m not sure has been fully answered: if you strip out the nihilism and bleak debauchery, what’s actually left to The Weeknd’s writing? Now I just described a decent amount of thematic depth, sure, but part of The Weeknd’s appeal and flair was how well he created a setting - often a graphic and incredibly messy scene, but the lurid framing and eye for detail made them stick in your memory vividly, even when they barely made sense. Melodramatic and occasionally cliched, absolutely, but it was a huge asset in his arsenal… and it’s hard to escape the feeling that in both the choice of framing device and in trying to play things more mature, we’ve lost some of that detail in order to embrace high concept abstraction, or to sound a little more tasteful in the ‘adult contemporary’ mold. It’s a big reason I like ‘Here We Go… Again’ with Tyler, The Creator - who really could have turned in a longer verse - because even if The Weeknd is braggadocious, it sets a scene, which works to a lesser extent with Lil Wayne’s autotuned croak on ‘I Heard You’re Married’ - just don’t care for him on that production, even if his verse was okay. Most of these songs wind up feeling thin or a little underwritten as a result, and while you could chalk up some of that to being transitional towards… whatever styles or genres The Weeknd wants to explore outside of the haunted pop/R&B that’s his forte - electronic music certainly doesn’t demand more, and we’ll come back to that - I can’t help but feel that the album isn’t quite weird or philosophical enough in its writing to pay off its high concept, and that means you’ve swapped out the melodramatic texture for… well, songs that are way closer to adult contemporary, at least in their poetry.

But the other side of this is the production, and I’m going to put aside the consistent issue that every time The Weeknd leaves Illangelo off the album the production suffers or winds up way too damn polished for its own good - it happened on Kiss Land, it happened on Starboy, it especially happened on My Dear Melancholy, and I hate to say it but it happened on Dawn FM too. And what’s immensely frustrating is that I get why he probably did it - The Weeknd has been wanting to go more electronic for years now, it’s why Swedish House Mafia is here, he works well with Oneohtrix Point Never, and getting Max Martin and Oscar Holter for the rest of the project makes all the sense because they were behind ‘Blinding Lights’ and why not continue to print money? And I’m not going to say the production got worse here, because if anything it’s considerably more refined: the mixing is more refined and doesn’t have the rough, blown out edges of After Hours and the persistent low-end grooves drawing on nu-disco and darkwave kept the pace up - it’s only five minutes shorter than After Hours but feels way quicker. And while the historical callbacks are flagrant - Michael Jackson and Prince especially, and whenever The Weeknd put on the British accent I knew exactly what early Depeche Mode albums he was thinking about - it’s generally a glossy synth- and groove-driven sound I like that can create a seamless atmosphere.

And while I have nitpicks - every wheedling chipmunk vocal fragment against Oneohtrix Point Never’s distinctive, ever-so-slightly off keyboard tone can be frustrating, minus the booming bombast of 80s percussion some of the drums here can feel a bit flat, airless, and lacking in the same impact, especially on the clunky ‘Best Friends’ and the fizzy ‘Don’t Break My Heart’, and as much as I think the synths flooding the first half of ‘Every Angel Is Terrifying’ sound great, the transition to the jaunty radio ad fractures the one - there are cool elements that come out of this approach. I really like the shuddering skitter behind the hollowed out hook of ‘How Do I Make You Love Me’, which really pays off a sweet transition for an extended ‘Take My Breath’ that is considerably better in the album’s context, the fluttery Tomoko Aran sample to the killer groove of ‘Out Of Time’ is a real highlight and it flows great into those twinkling synths on ‘Here We Go… Again’, and that low-end synth has the coursing fullness to work regardless of whatever song we get. And then there’s ‘Less Than Zero’ with its brittle acoustics and ascending synthline and hazy hook that’s probably one of the stickiest on the entire album, certainly the most accessible and obvious single here… and that’s when you realize the other downside to losing some of that lyrical detail, in that I don’t think there’s a single hook here that can rise to The Weeknd’s best. Now on some level that’s not fair; most people do not make more than one ‘Blinding Lights’ - hell, the majority of people make, pardon the pun, less than zero ‘Blinding Lights’! But for a synthpop album with as robust bass grooves as you get, it’s startling how limited the choruses feel, and when you can trace the origin point of so many sounds on this album, the lack of distinctive melodic moments is worrisome. Or to put it another way, when I’ve heard a lot of these sounds already, it starts to feel like The Weeknd locked into his comfort zone and made a project so consistent that it lacks standout moments… almost like putting the radio on in the background.

But if anything, this does remind me a little of adult contemporary radio in the late 80s, where the flash and edge and sparkle of synthpop had been broadly accepted and the lustre was fading. And yeah, there was more refinement and maturity and for the better artists who weren’t trend chasing, it led to good music… but it could slide towards easy listening really fast, for better and worse. And when I look at the transition The Weeknd seems to be making with Dawn FM, it’s solid and consistent and balanced and mature, and for a lot of folks that’ll be enough… but while in the past he had his comfort zone, this is him being safe. Odd as hell to think that a transitional and more emotionally expressive album is ‘safe’, especially as these tones in synthpop are not really mainstream, even compared to nu-disco in pop now, but I also know where The Weeknd has been, and where this is coming from. And it’s not all just me wanting him to make another Thursday or something with that edge - if the compositions stuck out more for me, I think I’d be okay with the adult contemporary pivot. As it is, though… well, The Weeknd seems to be implying that this is the middle piece of another trilogy, with some sort of ‘afterlife’ to be coming after this, so maybe the truly wild stuff is to come. As it is, I think this is a step back from After Hours with fewer high points, but it’s still remarkably solid in its lane if not exceptional, and I’m only saying that because I know where he’s been in influence and execution. Either way, it’s interesting enough to start the year, and even if I’m mixed on it, more days than not I’d tune to this radio station - take that as you will.