Music Reviews

The long awaited 3rd studio album by the infamous youtuber turned singer Joji is after what felt like an eternity finally here and right of the back I gotta say this one kinda flopped. I’m not sure if Joji’s label was just forcing him to release something but besides a few key tracks this album feels more like an EP than his literal EPs. Like the enitre second half of this album is as undercooked as it gets – also on that note this is the last album in the world that would need 2 fricking discs, like the material on here can barely be counted for one disc considering it’s just around 20 minutes long. However there are, as always with Joji, few incredibly high highlights but even the short runtime can’t save those from being burried beneath just so many filler and clearly unfinnished tracks. Let’s go through some of those now, shall we?

The album kicks off with the literal best track on the album and also the big single from this thing „Glimpse Of Us“ a heart-wrenching piano ballad that sets the bar up so high for the rest of this album that even actual non-rushed tracks would have trouble measuring up to it. The lyrics are really heartfelt and Joji’s singing is very on point, everything just clicks with this one and it also just sticks with you for a long time. Things go south from here super fast though. The next song „Feeling Like The End“ has a solid trap beat that I think could have worked if the song just had a little more meat on the bones – it just comes and goes before you even get used to the switch in sound from the last song and it just leaves you kind of confused and craving for more. I do like the song overall, I just think it would have really benefited from just being longer, maybe have anohter verse also something like a bridge and you’ve got yourself a pretty decent Joji song, but like this it’s just decent. However the next song „Die For You“ does picks things up quite substantially, it’s another really solid ballad, with actual drums this time around and honestly just ear-gasmic Space Song-esk guitar licks and synth work that just transports you into another dimension – this one’s another hit for me, really wish this album had more songs like this one. After that comes the song „Before The Day Is Over“ where the only redeeming quality is honestly the lyrics, they for some reason really hit close to home for me, but I just wish the rest of the song was as intresting to convey those lyrics. Like if I don’t get grabbed by the lyrics and the story immidiately, the song just starts to drag so much and I usually tend to skip it. The first disc if you can even call it that closes of with the song „Dissolve“ that’s kind of hit or miss for me – there are some parts of it I really like but overall it’s just super forgetable and uninspired, not much else to say about it, the autotune is used really poorly here and the watery guitars just do nothing for me, it’s just a nothing burger of a song.

Now the second half has only 4 songs out of which 1 is an interlude, 1 is a demo and 1 is apparently a freestyle that’s honestly barely a song. And the only actual song on this side „NIGHT RIDER“ just straight up is not good. The sound effects are obnoxious and super distracting and again, there is just nothing to talk about here, like if you removed this song and honestly the entire second half and just released this as a weird EP mixtape thing it would have honestly been just so much better. The „BLAHBLAHBLAH DEMO“ sucks, like the song is just bad. The vocal melody is kinda nice? But yeah, the song literally says to you it’s a demo, like why is it even included on here. „YUKON (INTERLUDE)“ is probably the best song out of the bunch here, it’s just the most listenable and solid cut on this side, but again nothing mind-blowing, I could take it or leave it to be honest. And finally the outro song „1AM FREESTYLE“ is just barely a song, it’s a nice outro song I guess, but it just tries to make this whole thing somewhat of a full experience when it’s just clearly just not.

And yeah, that’s Joji’s latest album SMITHEREENS – an album that had a lot of potential for being his best but ended up being arguably his worst. I’m sorry, I definetly can appriciate his growth as a singer and his song-writing capabilities have definetly improved as well over the years, but this is just blatantly unfinnished. I really think his label was just pressuring him to release something, because this album is the third of the length of his last and it has somehow double the ammount of filler.

-favorite tracks: Glimpse Of Us, Die For You, parts of Feeling Like The End and YUKON (INTERLUDE) and lyrics on Before The Day Is Over

-least favorite tracks: Dissolve, BLAHBLAHBLAH DEMO

Light 6/10