Music Reviews

The up and coming UK artist slowthai showed a lot of promise with his 2019 album „Nothing Great About Brittain“, where he showed a nice contrast between absolute bangers and the more introspective cuts – though here on this new album he decided to split the two into two seperate CDs. How did it work out?

Well I guess it’s safe to say by now that slowthai basically never misses with his album releases, or at least rarely – TYRON is again your whole slowthai package, though the two CD format makes for a few intresting changes. Firstly right of the back it’s pretty safe to say that the second half significantly out-shines the first one, to the point where it can be sort of distracting – the first half is by no means bad, but the somewhat decent collection of trap bangers just doesn’t live up to the introspective side of things on the second disk – even the production takes a major step-up. There are of course high-lights on both sides, such as „CANCELLED“ on the first one with it’s string arranged psychedelic production, weird yet captivating swith ups and the guest star of the show Skepta, who absolutely murders his verse, to the point where slothai’s verse doesn’t hit as hard as it could’ve and „nhs“ on the other half of this album, with it’s weird high-pitched chorus, very sad and moody piano chords accompanied by a trap beat and slowthai’s introspective lyricism, taking a deep look at our current state of society. But the real highlights are really mostly scattered throughout the second disk, exceptions on the first one being „MAZZA“, though mostly for ASAP Rocky’s appearance on the track and „PLAY WITH FIRE“, whitch is the closing track of of the first half and the dark switch up by the end of the song really sets the mood for the second disk – the rest of the first disk are all basically perfectly acceptable trap bangers with a cool bar here and there or a more psychadelic beat, but that’s about it. The first song „i tried“ of the second disk immidiately picks things up though and you can just hear the quality gap between the two sides instantly – it is also I believe the only song on the album to use real drums throughout it’s whole runtime and the funky guitar in the background combined with the whole aesthethic of the track is a nice touch. Then there is the mezmerizing „focus“, which has this amazing female vocal line incorporated in the beat, it really ads so much flavour to the song. The following „terms“ is a 3 minute collaboration track with Dominic Fike and Denzel Curry and yeah, it’s basically as good as that collaboration could’v been – the beat is very soothing but nothing out of the ordinary, but the guest verses and the sung hook on this one are really what sells it. The accoustic ballad „push“ is actually one of my favorites here, I love how this track uses space with spacy and faint vocals in the background aswell as some kind of post-rockish guitars at places, it’s just really well orcheastrated, even though the beat is kind of bland – also the female singer fits this song so well, it’s insane. The second to last song „feel away“ is another collaboration track though this one’s more somber and melodic, with some great production value and appearances from James Blake and Mount Kimbie, that only add to the track’s lush production. The closer „adhd“ is a rather depressing ending, reminds me off something that could’ve easily landed on the „Some Rap Songs“ album by Earl Sweatshirt – slowthai talks about his depressive state on this one, really going all out in the second half, bordering with emo rap, though in a good way – it’s a reall powerful and emotional send off to this album.

So there you have it, the brand new album from one of the most promising voice in modern music and it’s pretty good, not gonna lie, thought this was a pretty enjoyable listen through and through, even through the pretty obious quality gap on the two discs, I still found some enjoyment from both of them – but if anything, this is another win for slowthai, really pushing the boundaries of what he is capable of, even though it in my opinnion doesn’t quite live up to his previous studio effort.

Light 8/10