Beauty Behind the Madness

Real Life builds up to a pitch of doomed drama from a corrosive slash of guitar as Tesfaye confides that even his “Mama called me destructive”. But Ed Sheeran fails to rescue him on the tedious Dark Times and Lana Del Rey--who ought to be his perfect partner in pop-noir--adds nothing but a bored spritz of vocal perfume to the lethargic Prisoner.

Beauty Behind the Madness leaves one feeling just as estranged from Abel Tesfaye’s depraved character as previous releases boasting less adhesive tunes.

The Weeknd’s most conventional songs thus far are Sheeran’s boringly retro Dark Times, and Shameless, a guitar ballad unredeemable even by its deranged guitar solo. Elsewhere, the step up is more convincing, if not always easy to listen to.

The commercial strides are obvious. The creative advancements are less apparent, obstructed by some unappealing measures, but they're in there.

The sound is more dense and self-conscious than ever, the twin Achilles’ heels of this star. At times, the mix blurs Tesfay’s vocals, preventing them from taking a deserved center stage.

Despite such strong highlights dropped in the album’s middle section (the acoustic guitar ballad “Shameless” easily vying for the album’s silver medal after the gold that is “Can’t Feel My Face”), Beauty ends up having a strange beast of a failing: none of the guest spots really add to the album’s overall vibe.

The album is plagued by similarly banal lyrics about sex and drugs that make his playboy image feel all the more superficial.... More positively, the poppier musical strategy perfectly suits his boyish vocals, and he sounds more open and less pretentious than ever before.