Review Summary: It's another Chainsmokers album.
Amazingly, this pair are still releasing albums. You’d be forgiven for assuming they only release singles considering how little fanfare surrounds their LP launches (even from radio hosts). World War Joy is their third attempt at a cohesive album to match their bigger songs, and unfortunately, it’s not great.
The Chainsmokers aren’t exactly a respected duo among music critics, but that hardly stops them from being popular. This is an album that presents their usual few radio-friendly singles following *insert current trend* mixed with lower-effort filler songs (funnily enough, all released as singles too). And while their radio-singles mostly work in the Top 40 context, they’re even a mixed bag.
‘Who Do You Love’ is admittedly, really fun. The 5 Seconds of Summer featured song, played to death on Australian radio, is solid execution on another version of their big summer song. The vocals are fine, and the melody builds to an enjoyable climax for the final chorus. Also, the final swear of the song isn’t properly censored on the radio (at least on the stations that I listen to), so I have a soft spot for this. The kind of song you listen to because it’s fun to sing or dance along to with your partner.
‘Takeaway’ is just ‘Roses’ with a higher pitched vocalist, but it’s fine. It’s not winning Grammys, certainly not with lyrics like “Your heart for take-away”, but it contains a rare drop which works well enough even if it's boring.
Regarding other features, Bebe Rexha pulls off a surprisingly energetic performance in her song (compared to the album’s overall energy), and Mark Hoppus and Travis Barker from Blink-182 appear in the 4th track. Hoppus adds a verse to ‘PS I Hope You’re Happy’, a song that didn’t really need a feature, but apparently needed to make a reference to ‘Closer’. Amy Shark’s breathy vocals are by far the best part of a song that only stands out because it does something different. It leans into the big-room sound, and at least seems consistent to that genre (think LRAD by Knife Party).
Otherwise, the only song that really does anything is ‘Family’, their Avicii tribute song with Kygo. While it comes with a touching music video, as well as ‘Wake Me Up’ inspired guitar work, the song is just there. As with too many songs on this album, ‘Family’ just feels too muted.
The rest of the album is just lacklustre. When a duo can only seem to differentiate their songs by which artist features on it, you end up with an album with just 2 songs produced without a feature. To be succinct, they’re both forgettable, and don’t really serve a purpose for the album.
Honestly, the album isn’t garbage. It’s not offensive. The songs don’t make me want to die like other albums I’ve heard, they just aren’t that great. The best songs are ones where the features steal the show, as is expected from a Smokers release. I’ve read previously that these guys purposely don’t produce big drops anymore so other artists can remix their work, and that would honestly make sense. Even their loudest songs fail to energise but aren’t horrible in a playlist with other EDM/Pop music. It’s music that sounds good while you’re bored at work, but you wouldn’t call them good.
The biggest failing is that the album just… is. You can listen to individual songs and have a good time, but as an album, it just doesn’t work. There needs to be cohesion of some description, and this just feels like they threw 10 of their songs onto a disc and called it a day.
I’d recommend listening to ‘Who Do You Love’, ‘PS I Hope You’re Happy’ and ‘Call You Mine’ if you’re into modern EDM/Pop blended songs, otherwise feel free to ignore the whole album.
