Revival

“Believe”, finds Eminem’s faith in his talent creeping back in. The ticking beat and sinister, John Carpenter-esque piano figure are harbingers of resurgent menace, while the hazy, treated chorus hook sounds like medication flooding his spirit with the confidence that carries the rest of the album. There are plenty of typical Eminem tropes scattered throughout Revival: he picks constantly at the scabs of marital failure. ... But ultimately, it’s all about Eminem himself.

Like his misogynistic streak, his sound is stuck in the past. What keeps our attention is his exuberant delight in language itself, such as his geometry pun in River: “this love triangle / left us in a wrecked tangle”. (Say it aloud).

At least a third of the tracks are songs I could do without. The other two-thirds show that whether you love or hate the modern day Marshall Mathers, he's still as relevant as he ever was.

It seems that despite decades of oversharing, self-analysis, bombast, outrage and drama, Eminem does, still, have something to say, as well as the means to say it.

At 77 minutes, Revival is a heavy listen, going deep on ballads with guests like Ed Sheeran and X Ambassadors. But a certain indulgent messiness has always been part of the Eminem experience. ... When Revival's confessionals work, it's proof that, when the real Marshal Mathers stands up, he can still pull us into his evocative dramas.

Overall, the album is fairly easy listening.

While Em’s bullheaded decision to experiment with the flow should be heartily respected, it doesn’t shroud the fact that he’s not charting any new territory, at least topically. But it’s largely the retreads of past glory where he hits stride the hardest.

Provocative and muddled, Revival percolates with ambition but doesn't lack in laziness either.

Revival is probably the best of his recent albums, but like much of his post-peak output, it is a mix of the entrancing and the mystifying, full of impressive rapping that’s also disorienting.

Not all of it works, but his renewed creative vigour is obvious and his sense of duty commendable.

We can say that the real Slim Shady does show up and prove himself on a handful of Revival's songs, but many of the more 'noteworthy' moments are buried under a mountain of contradictions and cringe-worthy attempts at shock value.

While the long tracklist and equally protracted verses make for an exhausting listen, there are rewards for those that endure.

Eminem can still dazzle with his wordplay--“Adversity, if at first you don't succeed/Put your temper to more use/'Cause being broke's a poor excuse” is an early highlight on “Believe”--yet his delivery, listless torrents of language, makes him seem noncommittal to the songs he's performing. He's not quite on autopilot throughout, but he does sound distracted. Eminem is more engaged on Revival when his focus turns to his family.

Chosen topics prove less crucial than his relentlessly tedious delivery. [Feb 2018, p.51]

Eminem has never sounded more like a man out of time. [Mar 2018, p.107]

There are just too many pop stars here (Pink, Beyoncé, Kehlani) wailing anodyne hooks over glutinous beats. Perhaps the biggest problem with Revival – as with many latterday Eminem records – is the struggle of an intelligent fortysomething artist to evolve while somehow remaining true to the demands of his sniggery core audience of alienated males.

The album frequently sags, as any 19-track album is wont to do, though two introspective moments at the end save the concept somewhat.

Revival isn’t even interesting enough to warrant all of the critical beatdowns it’s taken in its short time in the world. Instead, it’s boring and predictable, which are greater threats to the Eminem legacy than anything else.

The failures of his latest effort don’t simply center on that side step from audacity to reckoning. It’s in how that move has somehow left him struggling to write a listenable song.

But where Jay-Z raps with style and elegance to spare, Eminem hits clunker after clunker on Revival, his clumsiest record to date. It’s not just the corny jokes and goofy puns, either, although those are plenty bad

There are no good songs. There are no ‘moments’ that make any of these 18 songs worth listening to. There’s nothing that implies there is potential, there are no guests that make Eminem worth listening to, there are no good lyrics, there are no good production flourishes, and there aren’t any melodies. There’s no evident flow, and there isn’t anything to be gained from listening to this that can’t be done by listening to literally anything else.

Revival is so uninspired and lost that picking it apart is a hopeless affair.