The Weeknd After Hours 2LP

Rolling Stone's The 50 Best Albums of 2020 - Rated 32/50!
Consequence of Sound's Top 50 Albums Of 2020 - Rated 15/50!

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The Weeknd's latest chapter via XO/Republic Records, After Hours, features global hits like "Heartless" and "Blinding Lights". Filtering R&B, pop and hip-hop through an ambitious widescreen lens, The Weeknd quietly took over popular music and culture on his own terms. As a result, the multi-platinum two-time GRAMMY® Award winner has emerged as one of the most successful and significant artists of the 21st century.

Rarely do such extensively marketed albums artistically deliver, but After Hours is a pop masterpiece... It's an endlessly replayable album, a 'brain melting psychotic chapter' successful in every way... The standard weight discs, digitally mastered at 44.1/24 by Dave Kutch and cut by Mark Santangelo, sound as expected: bright but detailed and far more engaging than the file. The difference feels like a completely different album; the synths immerse you right into the Weeknd's world.

No doubt inspired by the pawn shop, hologram glaze that ensconces the Safdies' filmography - after all, he did appear in their magnum opus, Uncut Gems - The Weeknd returns not as a starboy but a starman. After Hours wastes zero time making that point clear with opener 'Alone Again' warping right into his soul. Yet, it's not exactly a torturous space anymore; instead, his introspections are laced with an adventurous spirit that's as affecting as it is addicting.

Abel Tesfaye is at his best when he follows his moody impulses through sleek sounds, and he did that brilliantly on his 2020 synth-pop smash 'Blinding Lights.' The rest of After Hours is his best version yet of his go-to lachrymose lushness, splitting the difference between glowering self-indulgence and Top 40 smoothness on post-breakup purges like 'Hardest to Love' and 'Too Late,' as well as the Elton John-interpolating 'Scared to Live,' and his vocal flexes throughout the LP prove once again that he's one of the most gifted R&B crooners to hit the radio this century. Hard to love? Perhaps. But on After Hours, he's never been easier to like.