Review Summary: so you just affirmed your life, now what?
The release of
Nurture, Porter Robinson’s second album, coincided with me receiving my first dose of the good old covid vaccine. It was a weird experience: I had to face one of my worst fears (needles) in one of my favourite locations that I hadn’t visited in well over a year (a concert hall) while listening to an album that I might not have connected with otherwise (a bombastic pop album with just enough
drem to draw me in). After the anti-sickness juice entered my bloodstream, I sat down on a bench in Amsterdam’s least scenic neighbourhood, hit the repeat button on “Something Comforting” and “Look at the Sky”, and felt a genuine bit of optimism and, dare I say, happiness for the first time in quite a while.
“
Bitch I’m Taylor Swift”. Oh hi welcome back Porter Robinson, welcome back me. It’s been over three years since
Nurture, and I can’t say I have revisited the album a whole lot since that first post-covid(ish) spring. Things have changed for me: I’m still fairly optimistic, but I am not too scared of needles anymore (thank you involuntary pandemic-era exposure therapy). Things have changed for Porter, too: he’s no longer in the business of affirming lives through expansive, interlude-heavy spacesynth tunes. Instead, his new album
Smile! :D shows he’s in the business of business, irony, and clusterfuckiness. In essence, it’s a collection of bright, maximalist pop tunes attempting to be tongue-in-cheek metacommentary on stardom while weaving in
srs emotions too. It’s a bit much.
But, to be fair, it’s also quite fun. Opening duo “Knock Yourself Out XD” and “Cheerleader” are huge songs filled to the brim with light, uplifting synths and massive choruses. They’re designed to be big moments during live performances, even if neither reaches the heights of previous Porter-anthems. Moreover, these songs show that he is not quite able to connect his sense of humour with serious sentiments: the contemplations on fame are not nearly as hard-hitting as they would like (“
I drive a new Bugatti / not a Mercedes Benz”). Sure, there are plenty of fun little one-liners, but it feels like
Smile! :D fails to strike a lyrical balance all throughout. It switches from memes to suicide in a way that feels a little too careless; it wraps genuine feelings in so many layers of irony that it’s hard to find the Porter Robinson underneath it all. In fact, the explicit irony of the album feels a tad cheap at times - no dose of satire can save uninteresting songwriting. Crucially, it feels like the record prevents itself from being and feeling as fun as it could have by attempting to convey anything beyond the “:D” and “XD” of it all.
Moreover,
Smile! :D as a whole is a bit of a sonic failure. Individual songs are sparkly and enjoyable: the bleep-bloops of “Kitsune Maison Freestyle” are irresistible, “Mona Lisa” is a lovely breezy tune, and “Russian Roulette” boasts a genuinely gorgeous chorus. However, the full project manages to be less than the sum of its parts. Porter has always traded in big, expansive sounds, but this record is the first instance where things get
too much: here, the maximalism feels overwhelming as everything is channelled into just about every moment, rather than allowing for a little more room to breathe. Sure, there are quiet songs, but they feel like outliers and soft songs
for the sake of soft songs rather than ones that embrace the record’s vision. Closing cut “Everything to Me” is a little more successful than “Easier to Love You”, but neither manages to reach any true emotional highs. Ending the album on a “I love my fans but the parasocial shit is a bit weird yo” is perhaps an apt conclusion to a record like
Smile! :D, but it’s not necessarily an intriguing or enjoyable one.
Smile! :D is a weird album. It’s equal parts disappointing and enjoyable: it’s a good time if you don’t pay too much attention and zone out every once in a while. Most of all, it’s a failed experiment. Ironic pop-Porter sounds fun on paper, and it’s pretty fun one song at a time. As a full length, it’s an overwhelming-yet-underwhelming 40 minutes of music. Guess I’ll have to affirm my own life for now.
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