grandson - Death Of An Optimist (Review)
I can't pretend I was optimistic going into this album, and keeping an open mind was certainly more of a challenge than usual, and as it turned out my scepticism was well-founded, this album being a textbook example of a trainwreck.
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| On Grandson's debut album he proves why it's better to let emo die, his unlikeable fusion of whiny emo antics with over-the-top bass, cheap trap beats and flavourless guitar riffs serving up nothing special, nothing memorable, and nothing good. |
4th December 2020
Fueled By Ramen
My Rating:
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2.4
/10
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So, the long-awaited debut album from the ambitious Grandson, an artist who's been making waves outside of the mainstream for his bold genre-blending and generation-defining lyrics, and - I'm sorry I can't do this. Whilst all of what I just said was true, I'm not going to pretend that any of those descriptors are particularly deserved, and for as accurate as they may be on a "technical" level, they are no indicator of quality or taste, which this album sorely lacks. If you know anything about Grandson, then you'll know that a good way to frame their brand of chaotic genre-blending is pretty firmly rooted in the electro-rock of the nineties, and is far less original than his revolutionary presentation would have you believe.
My personal view is that Grandson's music is strikingly similar to that of Imagine Dragons but, on top of the rock-and-dubstep collision that they pursue, Grandson adds EDM, trap and emo to the mix, resulting in what is occasionally a convoluted sound. More often than not however, he keeps it to just one or two of these sounds at once, resulting in an album that is more sonically varied than it is ambitious, and consequently undermines a whole lot of the aforementioned "boldness" of his music. So, not quite at the front lines of musical experimentation that his fans would have you believe. Hm. The thing is, all it really serves for is the perfect example of why having a groove is so essential in this kind of music, and why Grandson's music will (hopefully) never grow to the level of popularity that YUNGBLUD has achieved.
Now, the instrumentation aside, one of my biggest problems with this album is undoubtedly a lyrical one, the shallow core of the album revealed as soon as you pay just the slightest attention to the lyrics. You see, the themes of this album are actually rather interesting, across the brief runtime spanning topics of depression, war, compromising morals, losing ones optimism, addiction and being left behind by a movement. All of this has great potential, but none of it has any weight as the lyrics fail to actually explore or build upon these themes. Take the song "Left Behind", a track that, surprise surprise, deals with the theme of being left behind by a movement, and struggling with commitment to that same movement. To me, this sounds like a promising foundation for a song, but the extent to which the lyrics expand on this is non-existent, instead simply stating the theme with the line "I don't wanna move on, but I don't wanna get left behind", whilst the verses ramble on with Grandson's signature pretentious nonsense, remaining firmly within the clichés of the theme without any new perspective, wit or insight, leaving me utterly cold to the track.
Now, I wish I could say this was an isolated incident, but the album is almost exclusively comprised of moments like this, the song "Dirty" being another example, the line "I got a skeleton under the floorboard / I got a secret I need you to keep" either being unsuccessful as the "secret" isn't in any way explored, or perhaps the skeleton is meant to be taken literally as the secret, in which case this is a ridiculous attempt at something darker that contrasts the rest of the song's premise of asking whether you could "get your hands dirty" and potentially kill someone. In both cases, it's a throwaway line that just serves to illustrate the shallow melodrama that Grandson exercises, and how tiresome it becomes so early on.
This is, of course, the prevalent emo influence breaking through to the forefront of each and every song, and this is where the audience becomes inseparable from the music, as Grandson panders to the angsty, "alternative" young teens who'll lap this up, providing the "edgy" themes they crave with no depth, originality or distinct message. As an older teen who's emo phase was more of a pretentious indie rock phase, I'm afraid I'll always lack sympathy for artists that fall into this lane (just look where I placed Green Day on my Worst Albums list last year), and Grandson certainly isn't getting a pass here.
Finally, I'd be a fool to not mention the structure of this album, or lack thereof I suppose, the lack of cohesion both thematically and instrumentally resulting in an album that isn't just whiny, tiring, shallow and melodramatic, but also one that's extremely messy. Almost every transition between songs feels rushed and clunky, many of the tracks not even given a proper ending before you're moved onto the next one, presented with an entirely different combination of influences that I'm certain could have been reordered to flow better given how many songs are roughly interchangeable with another.
Thematically, I'd argue the lack of cohesion is even more abrupt and disconnected. The decision to name this album Death Of An Optimist and use that as the title of the very first song was a poor one, that being the only track that actually deals with this topic. Moreover, it presents the possibility that this album could have been the slow decline of a person's optimism as the world around them falls apart, a concept that deserves better than being smacked onto one singular mediocre track on this album, but I suppose that would be asking for too much. This album lacks any cohesion anyway, with further confusion to be found from the last song "Welcome to Paradise", a track that essentially plants a stack of TNT on the album's bareboned foundations and sets them alight, the topic of this one being this perfect little place that Grandson can go to where none of his worries even effect him, and now there's a love interest too and everything's going to be okay and I just have to ask - Where did that come from? Where?
Quite honestly, I don't really care about this album. It feels like too obvious a target, too blatant an ugly update on the same formula that Twenty One Pilots, Panic! At The Disco and My Chemical Romance have all played into over the last few decades, except all of those artists have at least one good album, and I'm just not convinced that Grandson has that in him. I mean, he even rips off one of Panic!'s most iconic lines on one of his songs, and not even in a creative repurposing as is pretty common with artists in the mainstream right now. No, I don't have any hope for Grandson's career, my usual optimism dead due to this album. Wait a minute... that's the title of the album... huh.
BEST TRACKS
Death Of An Optimist
WORST TRACKS
In Over My Head; Identity; We Did It!!!; WWIII; Drop Dead
BREAKDOWN
Ambition: 4
Atmosphere: 2
Catchiness/Enjoyability: 1
Content/Ideas: 4
Emotion/Engaging: 1
Execution: 2
Production: 4
Structure: 3
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Lyrics: 1
Vocals/Flows: 2
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Total: 24
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