And I’m stoked, because it’s been a minute since anything knocked me over with a feather like my first listen of Blonde. Lambert: I’ll be honest - this album has me kind of lost for words. “Did you call me from a séance? / You are from a past life,” he says to an ex (or maybe just a former friend) on “Nights.” There are ghosts like that swirling all through this album, restless and unsatisfied, demanding attention from the here and now. As on Nostalgia, Ultra and Channel Orange, it’s often hard to be sure when the stories he tells on Blond(e) are meant to be taking place - they all seem to float in a hazy, indeterminate middle distance. The other part is that these are memory songs, and Frank is presenting them to us in ways that mimic the subjective experience of wrestling with old, unresolved emotions. Sasha wrote last week about how Frank Ocean has been foregrounding the invisible creative labor behind his work, and that’s definitely part of what’s going on. I hear it in the way “Solo” is split into two halves that don’t quite fit together, and in the way that “Ivy” sounds like an intimate demo for a thunderous power ballad, which makes it feel so much more real than if it were blown out with stacked chords and cymbal crashes. Vozick-Levinson: After listening to Blond(e) a dozen or so times this weekend, I’m finding myself drawn to the quality that Charles mentions - that aura of incompleteness that glimmers around the edges of the finished product. For me, it’s hypnagogia, reflection, sanctuary - all antithetical to the model of the contemporary pop star and all, I think, needed right now in the collective psyche.
He’s diverting hype instead of playing to it, seeing what other kinds of heightened emotional states he can inspire beyond hype and its satisfaction. From the first snippets that surfaced on the Endless stream, I liked how Ocean was playing with attention, letting that long-awaited music float through a virtual space with no announcement, no buildup. These are dreams whose most powerful, salient moments fade upon waking, leaving you with the memory of peripheral but strangely compelling details. When I’m actually listening to each record, I’m most gripped by Ocean’s vocal moments: the way he strains his voice on “Ivy,” the repetition on “Comme Des Garçons.” When I step away from the music, what sticks is the negative space: the revolving synth riff on “Be Yourself” and “Futura Free,” the interstitial ambient moments beneath the power saws.
Geffen: I don’t know if I’ve ever had a listening experience quite like Blonde and its meditative warm-up, Endless.
I don’t know if I can pinpoint favorite songs just yet, but I have favorite moments: the children’s choir at the end of “Pretty Sweet,” that gorgeous ’70s synth arrangement at the end of “Skyline To,” the line on “Self Control” where Frank sings, “I came to visit ’cause you see me like a UFO.” It’s gorgeous. When I saw that heavy list of contributors on Twitter, I expected something like The Life of Pablo or Coloring Book - chock-full of voices and diverse production - but it’s surprisingly not like that? Blonde has such a distinct, unifying sound, all watery keyboards and distorted guitars, and while there are dips into genre (the soul of “Pink + White,” the trip-hop-y “Close to You”), the record almost plays like one whole track. It’s the record you put on at the end of the party as people are drifting out the door. There’s a dreamy, introspective summertime sadness that blankets Blonde in particular, and now I’m thankful Frank released the record when he did, in mid-August. The specifics are for each of us to discover - probably in private, with a nug and mom on voicemail.Ĭills: Three years ago, Frank Ocean said that he was listening to The Beach Boys for inspiration, but I’m still surprised to hear those influences on Blonde and Endless. Profound and in-progress, perplexing and luxuriant, not in the least bit disposable, they lift us above the grimy everyday grabass and send us floating to a cosmos that’s less ugly and petty and exploitative, where it’s all a rush of feelings gradually taking shape as melodies and rhythms and smatterings of found and lost sounds. They’re unveiling artistic upside-downs that lure you in, yet are so mesmerizing that you want to stay the night. The result is that our major artists - virtually all of them African-American - are creating full-length albums that recall nothing less than ’60s/’70s auteur films, speaking in discrete, fresh idioms. And in its commercially constructed template, it is today’s best full-lengths are a hybrid of mixtape drift and artistic meditation, released whenever the hell. Aaron: Capitalist techspeak prophecy-fulfillment has repeatedly declared the album a relic, a fossil form.