The Weeknd:House of Balloons

The Weeknd : House of Balloons
9.0/10 dropps

There’s something about musical artists that drench themselves in mystery and intrigue that drives me crazy. Your friend shows you one or two YouTube links of an amazing song and neither of you know anything about the face behind the music. A couple weeks later, an entire album is dropped, along with most of my jaw. I find myself furiously thinking, “Who is this, what is this, how is this happening, why didn’t I hear about this sooner, why isn’t everyone talking about this, are they crazy?” Such is the story of The Weeknd.
Abel Tesfaye is from Toronto, Canada and he uses the moniker The Weeknd. That’s about all I know regarding the person and it’s about all that anyone can find with a couple Google searches. The music he makes is an entirely different story. You don’t need the internet (well I guess to get the record you do), or an encyclopedia, or a biography detailing the trials and tribulations Tesfaye confronted in his cold childhood winters to enjoy this stuff. Really, all you need is a good set of ears and a brain, because The Weeknd is music that does the soul and body well. At its core, The Weeknd is essentially R&B, but simply saying that is a severe understatement. The Weeknd is careful, constructed, beautiful, passionate – music seemingly fueled by sex and drugs.
Let’s be honest for a second. The opening track is titled “High For This.” Tesfaye is urging us to be under the influence for this, his music, to open our receptors, make our synapses fire faster, have our pupils dilate and our heartbeats shoot through the stratosphere. I’ll say it now just to get such a ridiculous statement out of the way early, but Tesfaye’s music honestly makes me feel like I’m having sex. His voice fills the role of the post-coital whispering in which couples engage after doing the deed. It’s incredibly sensual – almost too sensual. At the end of “High For This” when he pleads “Trust me girl, you wanna be high for this” you can feel it in every single sinew and fiber. It’s unsettling, but in the way that making out with your girlfriend in your parent’s bed is unsettling.

We can draw some comparisons and say that Tesfaye has a little bit of Michael Jackson in him, mixed in with the new-jack swing of the ‘90s, as well as the swagger and confidence of today’s (underground) hip-hop and R&B (let’s say The Dream or Justin Timberlake for example). The production (which sadly neither I nor anyone else knows very much about) is simply sublime. House of Balloons integrates samples that range from Beach House to Siouxsee and the Banshees combined with cracking snares, pounding bass, searing synthesizers, which result in the perfect backdrop for Tesfaye’s heart wrenching voice. “The Morning” incorporates some classic guitar riffs that lead into a subdued, wavering ocean of pulses until the snare rolls through and everything falls into itself, perfectly in place. Tesfaye sings in the chorus “All that money, the money is the motive” and it’s simple, ideal, greedy but so very pleasing. “Wicked Games” offers a powerful, trudging ballad that finds peak-popularity Boys II Men influences, only to punch them square in the face (respectfully of course) and knock them off their place. I don’t think I’ve ever been as infatuated with R&B music as I am with The Weeknd, and it blows me away that it’s being created by a dude in his early 20’s from Canada.

House of Balloons throws you on a sexually charged ride the entire way through, and there’s very little you can do to control it. All you can do is just appreciate how meticulous this record is. There is such significant attention to detail in every song that I find myself noticing a new layer of sound with each consecutive listen. “Loft Music” is simply one of the most entertaining tracks I’ve heard so far this year. Tesfaye’s delivery throughout the song is impeccable, sometimes fast, slicker than tar, other times calm and collected. He boldly declares “that [he’s] only fucking 20, girl” all the while the bass tears away at the woodwork in your room and the snares shoot of like F-16’s and you just sit there in disbelief. It’s really something special and something that deserves as much attention as possible. I see big things in the future for Tesfaye, and in all honesty, it’s probably not that far away.

-Wilson De Gouveia