Beauty Behind the Madness

In reaching out and grabbing every pop sound that’s been successful in the past half-century of mainstream pop, rolling it tightly in a blunt and setting them ablaze with Abel Tesfaye’s sonorous vocals, this release gets much higher than most anything else released in 2015.

He's aiming for harder truths, creating pop that also works as a commentary on choice and consequence.

As a cohesive album, Beauty Behind The Madness showcases artistic growth and sonic progression through danceable pop deliveries like 'In The Night' and grand acoustics like 'Shameless'.

Heavyweight names add gloss and will no doubt result in dollar signs but Tesfaye is infinitely more interesting when lashing out largely alone.

Ultimately, Beauty Behind the Madness is a heftier House of Balloons. Its weight is carried in the access to better production and drugs, and what the album truly accomplishes is proving that The Weeknd has never been wretched.

An impressive and revealing new album full of expertly crafted pop songs with clear-cut commercial goals.

The music has moved from the shadowy haze of trip-hop to an emphatic, monumental clarity--high-end pop craftsmanship. The production still conjures huge spaces, but now they are brightly illuminated, with each sound in crisp focus.

Anyone looking for a collection of homages to the King of Pop will be disappointed. Those masterpieces ["Can't Feel My Face" and "On The Night"] are outliers, and they end up making Madness’ missteps all the more jarring.... In the middle of those two poles lies a series of bass-heavy throb-and-moan blasts with the signature oddness (shape-shifting melodies, twitchy percussion) that makes the Weeknd a compelling artist.

In between Beauty’s innumerable hooks, Tesfaye finds room to be a pop figure with something to say.

It expertly and carefully closes the gap between The Weeknd’s perception and his reality.

In the end, enjoying the Weeknd requires a certain suspension of disbelief, and that remains true on Beauty Behind the Madness. You really have to buy into his bad-guy persona.... For newcomers, there's a whole world to explore, and on Beauty Behind the Madness it's richer and smarter than ever.

If the sound has widened and even brightened in spots, the Weeknd still rocks a serious Eeyore vibe for much of Beauty Behind the Madness.

He may have softened his edge, upped the production and pulled in the stars, but The Weeknd remains an outsider.

Beauty Behind the Madness is front-loaded with fresh directions for the Weeknd that achieve the impossible: make it sound like he’s actually enjoying himself.

The lecherous lyrics that built his core are still here, but the beats are larger, more capacious, and more lush..... [“Tell Your Friends”] shows a growth in the Weeknd’s songwriting that unfortunately isn’t more prevalent throughout the album.

As good as these songs are, their lyrical monotony can be punishing.

Many fans will still be happy with the change that Beauty Behind The Madness has brought but some will surely feel the album has nothing to offer except immediate accessibility for the short attention of the mainstream.

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.