Review Summary: "If I could try a little harder, I would succeed."
It’s huge. It’s imperial. It’s a freakin’ behemoth. And still, ‘Adventure’, debut album by 20 year-old French house producer Hugo Pierre Leclercq, otherwise known as Madeon, insists on sticking to but a few sturdy sounds that have already been done before. Mixing the dreaminess of CHVRCHΞS and lyrics of a stuck-to-your-phone 12 year old, Madeon has been mixing up some hype for a few weeks now. Rightfully so? Sure, I guess so -- the beats can at times be very apt to head-bopping and the melodies can be very catchy and jittery; the production is amazing; the vocals are great. But what strikes me as off-putting about this album is one often dispelling but nevertheless present characteristic: it is juvenile.
Musically, ‘Adventure’ acquires a very muscular, beat-heavy style of EDM, whose tunes can, at times, appear as rather generic and scatter-brained -- in fact, unprogressive. “Beings” can be too repetitive and exaggerated sonically as it bounces deeply in bass, while not focusing as much on minimal melodic value, as does instrumental “Imperium.” The songs appear to show very little change in extended periods of time, such as “You’re On”, whose hook becomes so predictable and dull that makes it difficult to want to listen to the whole track (“Tell me whose side you’re on / You’re on, you’re on”).
This album seems to strongly reflect on the fact that Leclercq is but a 20 year-old and has just surpassed an awkward minimally-mature epoch (“And although you're broke / We spoke of innocence”). As such, the lyrics in that appear on ‘Adventure’ are heartfelt, only empathetic to young lovers (“Sometimes these memories pull us under / We get lost talking, days come by / But we're not getting any younger / Now it feels like real life has dragged us in its time”). Often, these lyrics can resort to being straight-up generic and only radio accessible: “Roses blooming in her cheeks / In her quiet kind of litany… Don’t you pay them any mind”. As a youngster is, ‘Adventure’ is a closed listen to different ideas or expansion -- this makes most tracks sound incredibly similar.
This LP is not elaborate or abstract; it is extremely sedentary, something that adventures should never be. Lyrically, it is too young -- it is not developed. Leclercq seems to be still stuck in his just-ended teenager years, and memories and information displayed here is too immature to be taken absolutely seriously. These ideas seem to be stuck in the tower the sleeve art predicts -- huge, and yet, limited. Youthfully free and too comfortable, Madeon fails to be completely satisfying on his alleged ‘Adventure.’ 3/5
