As always, Post Malone brings in his proposal an amalgam of genres which, inevitably, coexist pleasantly. If the cohesion is there, however, it lacks elements that really hook us in the pop-rap of his most recent effort, Twelve Carat Toothache.
Posted at 7:00 a.m.
If we didn’t have to write this review of Post Malone’s new album, we probably wouldn’t have bothered to listen to it more than once or twice. Listening is not unpleasant and a song like One Right Now, collab with The Weeknd, is sure to play through our speakers this summer. But nothing allows us to say that we will return to this disc once the last line of this review has been written.
Post Malone knows how to hook the listener. He has demonstrated it before. Many of his choruses are pop nuggets. His songs are very often the type to stay in our heads long after we’ve heard them. A song like Cooped Up (with Roddy Ricch), on his new album, falls into this category. Except that Twelve Carat Toothache is unequal. There are no songs of this caliber.
” Kill myself today, kill it all away he sings in his famous quavering voice in the opening piece, Reputation. ” I was born, what a shame “, he adds later. The tone doesn’t really change throughout the album. This is neither the first nor the last time that he sings of his despair. Posty is depressed and he offers us here three quarters of an hour of lamentation.
Post Malone’s music is more acoustic than ever, more intimate too. Two very good things. The rapper-singer, however, seems to have lost some of his ability to conquer us.
Pop/Rap
Twelve Carat Toothache
Post-Malone
Mercury Records/UMG