Album Review: Kevin Abstract — Blanket
Jagged round the edges, but the former Brockhampton frontman delivers a sonically triumphant cross-genre project.
It’s been little under a year since Brockhampton’s double-album farewell last November. During the collective’s concluding years, it became clear that certain members of the group were angling for the pursuit of solo endeavours, namely Abstract, Merlyn Wood and Dom McLennon. Of the three, Abstract is the most widely revered, with critically acclaimed ARIZONA BABY consolidating his place in the alternative hip-hop limelight following a touching but scattered debut offering American Boyfriend.
Blanket marks a brave left-turn for the artist. Indie rock and grunge are the two most attributable terms to the enigmatic sonic atmosphere created from the very start on tenebrous opener “When The Rope Post 2 Break”, and though it’s an industry-wide habit to search for hip-hop elements when listening to an LP from an established rapper, they really are quite minimal. Nonetheless, a pre-release statement indicated that Abstract wanted “to make a Sunny Day Real Estate, Nirvana, Modest Mouse type of record… that hit like a rap album”.
I suspect what he means is that while technical aspects of hip-hop are absent, the tracks are relentlessly energetic. That they are, and what’s more, every song feels fresh and one step ahead. Abstract doesn’t let one formula drag out over 3 or 4 tracks and become tedious - we go from pop-punk instrumentation on track 3 (“Running Out”) to Elliot Smith-adjacent indie rock on track 4 (“The Greys”) and get another curveball on the rather sweet and catchy “Madonna” on track 6. Kevin slips into every genre seamlessly, as though he’s been part of that particular scene his whole career. I suppose in a way, he has - Brockhampton’s appeal was a sense of genre-defying, erratic, bipolar chaos, best exemplified in the switch-up from the poignantly reflective themes on the group’s ‘final release’ The Family to the million-miles-an-hour and brilliantly facetious “FMG” (F*ck My Gang) released a day later, the intro track for their actual final release, TM.
Lead single “What Should I Do?” sees Abstract in his most comfortable and natural state - being really weird. The childlike vocals are a bit of a throw off at first, but sort of grown on you after a few listens and the ironically impotent chorus (“Don’t touch me / It turns me on / Frizzy hair / Naked hit the bong”) sort of osmoses into your brain after a while after you give up resisting it. The prolonged outro rendition of “Ba Ba Baaa” doesn’t really work for me here, but I don’t think Abstract necessarily is shooting for structural perfection on this particular joint.
“Voyager” feels much more serious. Kevin sounds vulnerable in a way that invites us to empathise, seemingly with a love interest the focal point, with his grip on something slipping away; whether that’s on the relationship itself or Kevin’s grip on emotional control is more left up to the listener, but the chorus indicates the feeling of stasis he’s in is a melancholic and ruminative one (“And every summer with you has been a dream / And every moment with you has been a dream / Ultraviolet / I cannot fight it”). All the while, a piano and guitar take turns crooning in the backdrop. This feels like the project’s epicentre, but its early position in the tracklist subtracts from this somewhat; maybe a later placing would have been more appropriate.
Blanket finishes with a resplendent three-track run. “Real 2 Me” is, by definition, an absolute banger. With a tempo of about 140 bpm, the song feels tailor-made for a concert crowd. Nevertheless, the lyrical themes are similar to those on “Voyager”, with Kevin in a liberated but longing place - the chorus goes “Can’t you see it’s not just a crush man? It’s real to me / I know it might not make sense / But being with you feels so intense / It’s real to me”. Penultimate offering “Heights, Spiders, and the Dark” is a folk track. Written in an eerie E key, the sole component of the production for the most part is what sounds like a banjo, before a violin makes itself known while Kevin repeats “The things I would do to keep all of you / To keep all of you / To keep all of you”.
On the closer, Kevin seems to come to peace with relegating the object of his desires to the status of a friend, though drops his guard to the listener, vulnerably admitting…
“You’ll never understand / The way I think about you / The way I think about you, my friend.”
The love between the two is ultimately unrequited, and there’s no Disney ending. However expected, it leaves you a little bit sad. Good music has a tendency to do that.