Aug 23

Aug 23 The Weeknd - Dawn FM

The Weeknd
Dawn FM
Release Date: January 7th, 2022
Label: XO/Republic

Review by Jared Stossel

Much like the rest of the world, The Weeknd had other plans when gearing up to release After Hours, his fourth studio album and a near-complete reinvention of his sound, incorporating elements of new wave, dream pop, and R&B tailor-made for arenas. “Blinding Lights”, one of the lead singles on After Hours, was making waves around the world, easily becoming one of The Weeknd’s most successful tracks. Come March 20th, 2020, After Hours would be released, but the world would be shut down due to the beginnings of the COVID-19 pandemic. From that moment onward, The Weekend (stage name of singer-songwriter Abel Tesfaye) would postpone a tour, cancel it entirely, announce a new tour that would move from arenas and take place entirely in stadiums, headline the Super Bowl Halftime Show, andrelease a brand new full-length titled Dawn FM. The fifth album in The Weeknd’s discography, born out of the darkness that enveloped the world two years ago, Dawn FM is a self-proclaimed “light at the end of the tunnel”, an upbeat venture through the inky blackness of a depressive state, heading towards the sunrise and a brighter future. Initially, Tesfaye had been working on another album of material inspired by this depression, but decided to scrap it after realizing it was taking too much of a toll on him.

Dawn FM incorporates new wave, spoken word, and theatricality into one package. The titular opening track features Tesfaye singing over bright and soaring synth lines about taking control of life. As the song fades out, a radio narrator (voiced by Jim Carrey) crackles through the speakers, telling us to get ready to venture back into the world. We’re on a car ride through the late night, the sun cresting over the horizon, as Carrey tells the audience, “You’ve been in the dark for way too long, It’s time to walk into the light and accept your fate with open arms. Scared? Don’t worry. We’ll be there to hold your hand and guide you through this painless transition.”

“Gasoline” feels like it’s been pulled straight out of the 1980s, an electronic drum beat pulses in the background as Tesfaye delivers vocal lines covered in dance-hall reverb. Arguably the two biggest tracks on the album are “How Do I Make You Love Me?” and “Take My Breath”, both anthemic tracks in their own right. The Weeknd delivers soft-spoken verses before each of these songs crescendo into stadium-filling electronic euphoria. As much as he channels the new wave era, Tesfaye knows how to meld these sensibilities with modern house music, a four-to-the-floor beat guiding the way through “Take My Breath”. “Sacrifice” evokes memories of Michael Jackson’s Thriller, a phaser-tinged guitar line leading the way through the night before we actually get a spoken word piece from none other than Quincy Jones (the legendary music producer that shepherded Jackson through three career-defining albums).

We start to slow things down with “Out of Time”, an R&B heavy slow jam that features The Weeknd delivering one of Dawn FM’s best vocal performances. If Dawn FM is an album that feels like a car ride through purgatory and heading towards the light, “Here We Go…Again” feels like the moment when the car pulls off to the side of the road, taking a beat to look out over the city and reflect on what’s already happened and what’s to come. Tesfaye’s lyricism isn’t exactly cryptic (“I loved her right, make her scream like Neve Campbell/But I make her laugh, swear it cures my depressing thoughts”), but it works well on this track. Tyler, The Creator stops by to drop a verse that’s calm in nature but acts as a well-fitting compliment to the song’s theme.

“Best Friends” pulls elements from 90s pop while taking a minimalist approach in production: other than The Weeknd’s vocal lines, there’s a few synths and a drumbeat. Conversely, “Is There Someone Else?” brings the smoothly laced R&B that we’ve known The Weeknd to deliver over the years to the forefront. The track that follows, “Starry Eyes”, acts as a complement to “Is There Someone Else?”, invoking that aforementioned minimalism with just Tesfaye’s voice and a synth line floating out into the ether.

“Every Angel Is Terrifying” blares through the speakers with a synthesizer line and wavering vocals that sound like something out of Stranger Things. In one of the album’s stranger and most enticing moments, a spoken word piece is delivered by film director Josh Safdie before culminating in a chaotic manipulated synth line that leads into a faux-radio commercial that advertises “an experience you’ll never forget”.

“Don’t Break My Heart” is lyrically straightforward, a bright keyboard pulsing beneath an 808-drum beat as Tesfaye pleads with love. The Calvin Harris-produced “I Heard You’re Married” finds The Weeknd melding styles as dance-pop meets hip-hop, collaborating with none other than Lil’ Wayne. Technically, the final track on Dawn FM is “Less Than Zero”, a song that finds Tesfaye coming to terms with the state of a past love, an upbeat tempo laced with an acoustic guitar that will be sure to move audiences in stadiums across the country on the upcoming After Hours Till Dawn tour.

The true “final” track is “Phantom Regret by Jim”, a spoken word piece from Carrey that is existential in nature, with the narrator asking us if we’re content with our lives. Are we happy with what we have? Are we satisfied by what we’ve done with the time we’ve spent in our live thus far? Questions and thematic elements like these, peppered with lyrics about love and heartbreak, comprise the sixteen tracks on Dawn FM. The Weeknd’s fifth studio album is but one piece in a larger art gallery. If After Hours is the darkness and Dawn FM is the way out of it, I’m sure that a third album in this concept will be on the way. The sun is rising.