Review Summary: Stay at your best, baby
The first time I reviewed
Endless, back in 2016, my main complaint was with the strangeness of the album's release, as an unbroken soundtrack to a film of Frank Ocean
slowly building a staircase that fans were left to divide into songs by themselves. I didn't know I was reviewing an unofficial release that would be remastered and released over two years later – hell, I didn't even know I was reviewing the first of two Frank albums that week. The sting of disappointment that we got an experimental/ambient R&B soundtrack instead of the long-awaited
Boys Don't Cry, which of course was coming right down the pipeline, clouded a lot of the feelings behind the words. Still, I had some legitimate concerns – the wet paper tunnel sound of the production, the German scientist techno track which opened and closed the album, the lack of fullness and richness that
channel ORANGE demonstrated even in its simplest moments, that sincerity and clarity of purpose that made Frank Ocean a name to take note of since "Pyramids" dropped. Even though that bad taste faded with the sweet honey of
Blonde just a few days later, it was mostly replaced by a feeling of
Endless as forgettable, a throwaway, at best a game-winning chess move by Frank which freed him of his Def Jam contract to reap all of
Blonde's rewards.
The biggest thing about
Endless 2018 is that it makes damn sure we know this album is no throwaway. Whether the re-release was always intended or it happened as something of a reclamation project for these forgotten songs, the new
Endless is slick, shiny and much-improved. You might immediately notice the "Device Control" bookends are gone, beginning the album with the serenely swelling strings of Jonny Greenwood rather than the dulcet tones of Wolfgang Tillman rumbling about Apple appliances. Song endings and transitions are strengthened and extended, with "Mitsubishi Sony" tapering off into a glitchy, oscillating beat that closes the album on a whisper of James Blake doing trap. With song delineations finally clear, the aimless middle stretch of the album becomes formless in a purposeful way, with a succession of bite-sized jams showcasing every side of Frank Ocean. The Sampha-assisted depressive pop of "Alabama" / "Mine" gives way to the sun-dappled R&B of "Comme Des Garcons", then to the harmonically gorgeous electronica of "Impietas / Deathwish (ASR)". Most importantly of all, folks, the
sound – no longer an album of songs playing down the end of a really damp hallway, this
Endless is gorgeously replete, voices and sounds swimming around your headphones in a clear demonstration of Frank's love for the sound of sound. All the straight winners have cemented their positions even further, notably the ambient classical of "At Your Best (You Are Love)" and the woozy bar-for-bar of "UNITY" (feat. Frank's funniest flex on record, 'how do I crop your new bitch out my vine？'). Meanwhile, quieter moments lost in the blur like the mournful "Wither", as good as a sister piece to
The Life of Pablo's "Frank's Track", and vocal harmony workout "Rushes" join them to stand out as career-best material.
I don't mean to drown the album entirely in praise. For all it's been fleshed out and unfurled and legitimised, this is still a fragmented, frustrating release with musical alexithymia, unable to stay in one place long enough for many coherent ideas to form. The question also lingers whether removing the original's blemishes was entirely a good move. Yes, I get down to the extended ending of "Mitsubishi Sony" and yes, I'll take this new production any day. But I honestly find myself missing the silly, didactic German voice welcoming me into Frank Ocean's weirdest and most impenetrable release, setting up the feelings of depersonalisation and dissociation which define the whole record. Stripped of its techno-freak electronica bookends,
Endless is in a strange place between accessible and bizarre, a more digestible version of an album designed to be a tough swallow. Somewhere between experimental EP, hip-hop mixtape and
Blonde b-sides album, there sits
Endless, a confounding and brilliant release from a confounding and brilliant artist.
