The Weeknd's suggestion that there's an awfulness at the heart of VIP area hedonism is always going to delight the indie crowd
R&B has been the sleek chassis of modern pop for a good 15 years now, but while it's enjoyed success and respect from a wide audience, a chunk of rock and indie fans still view it with suspicion. Some of this mistrust is technical. Modern R&B may have evolved from soul at the tail-end of the 80s, but it's encouraged a denaturalisation of the voice. First, the melismatic runs pioneered by Whitney Houston and Mariah Carey emphasised the artifice inherent in vocal performance, then the enthusiastic uptake of Auto-Tune piled on the alienation.
But some of the disdain for R&B is based on emotional distance. When the music has been critically embraced, it's often been on account of its innovative production. Take Say My Name, Destiny's Child's breakthrough hit: it captures an emotional situation with devastating clarity, but a lot of the attention went to the fractured beats created by producer Rodney Jerkins. That was appropriate ? they were part of what made the song great ? but the emphasis on innovative production made for a skewed perspective on R&B. In particular, non-fans exploring the genre are often turned off or baffled by the ballads and slow jams at the heart of the style, where production tricks are usually less overt. Breaking through the "ballad barrier" ? learning to surrender to mood, and let a performer lead me through a slow song ? was a big step for me in growing to love R&B.
So the sudden surge of interest in mysterious Toronto R&B newcomers the Weeknd is very intriguing to me. The Weeknd's debut ? a free-to-download album called House of Balloons ? has received rapturous acclaim from indie-oriented zines and blogs, despite the fact it's pretty much entirely made up of slow jams. The Weeknd specialise in long, drifting compositions with the emphasis squarely on the singer's intense, high-register vocals. In the background, ghostly and mournful beats gradually unwind.
The singing and songwriting on House of Balloons aren't especially strong by R&B standards ? what's getting the Weeknd so much attention is their command of mood. Most of the Weeknd's tracks are set in the bedroom or the club, but they're shot through with a pervasive desperation, hollowness and doubt. Like Kanye West or Drake ? who has enthusiastically endorsed the Weeknd project ? this music is about finding out that fun isn't really that much fun.
This isn't a vibe wholly new to R&B ? the critic David Toop once put together a magnificent compilation of existentialist soul ballads called Sugar and Poison, a title that also sums the Weeknd's mood up nicely. But the feelings they capture also aren't too far away from Pulp's This Is Hardcore. When it works, the Weeknd's music is amazingly effective ? House of Balloons/Glass Table Girls, for instance, builds a claustrophobic groove out of a Siouxsie sample, then drops into a numbed rap that makes compulsive partying sound remarkably horrible.
Along with the dropped-vowel name and the packaging, which is like an old Vice magazine photoshoot, it's this mood that underpins the Weeknd's indie appeal. The suggestion that there's an awfulness at the heart of VIP area hedonism is always going to delight a crowd who take pride in seeing through that stuff anyway. The danger is that this sort of anti-shallowness move ends up seeming a bit adolescent or self-satisfied.
For now, the Weeknd dodge that charge: House of Balloons is a fine debut. But as an R&B fan I can see myself coming back more often to another free download I heard this month: LA remixers' Nguzunguzu's Perfect Lullaby mix. It's a 50-minute tour of R&B from Brandy and Monica to Nicki Minaj, extending songs and moods by weaving them into house beats. As the Guardian's R&B guru Alex Macpherson put it, Nguzunguzu's additions always enhance the emotions in the original tracks, rather than override them. After immersing myself in the Weeknd's compelling but bleak songs, the Perfect Lullaby is a glorious reminder that what's appealing for me in R&B is its capacity for beauty and empathy, not its selfishness or doubt.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2011/mar/24/weeknd-rb-indie
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