Review Summary: The joy never arrived.
I’m going to start by saying that the debut album from singer-songwriter Esteban Flores, otherwise known as Slow Joy, is not bad. None of the songwriting on here is actually unpleasant to listen to—in fact, Flores has all of the identifying marks of a musician who has the potential to write good, if not excellent tunes. The problem with
A Joy So Slow At Times I Don’t Think It’s Coming—other than having an album title so repulsively long, I will only write it in full once more in this review—is embodied in that word “potential” from the previous sentence.
A Joy So Slow is so mired in an identity crisis that it squanders the potential it has, which makes it even more disappointing because this album actually could have been very good.
I’ll start with the contradictory nature of the album itself: At a mere twenty-seven minutes,
A Joy So Slow somehow feels excruciatingly long. Even more perplexing is the fact that a majority of the songs on the record are under the three minute mark. The songwriting is overbearingly melancholic and um… I don’t know… “singer-songerwritery,” yet many of the songs are also too short to feel as fully fleshed out as they should. The music is pretty, but keeps you waiting for something nearly the entire time. The result? A bunch of songs that feel too long but are too short and don’t actually ever go anywhere. The songwriting works on tracks like “Te Amo” or “Bent” which contain more energy and vigor in their nature, but a vast majority of the record moves at a pace that leaves a lot to be desired. It also doesn’t help that at least fifty percent of the tracks lack their own sort of identifying characteristics, making the album feel like a bit of a half-cooked stew with some spices thrown in to alleviate the bland taste.
I don’t know much about Slow Joy, but based on the length and nature of the tracks, my guess is that these songs are meant to be “TikTok” music. While I personally cannot stand TikTok and think that artists who make music to be consumed on a platform designed to reduce the human attention span to that of a gnat are missing the point of making music, it’s not really the problem here—the problem is that the songs feel half-written. Plenty of artists write short songs, but (and you can correct me if I’m wrong on this) writing shorter songs successfully usually requires doing something to get the listener’s attention. Shorter punk or grind songs work because even though there may not be much by way of substance, the fundamental premise of the songwriting is based on energetic and aggressive delivery. Much of this record is, however, devoted to melancholy songs about heartbreak (or love, we’ll get to that next)—and while there are moments throughout the album which are downright lovely, the first two-thirds of the album don’t ever really allow the listener to feel invested in what Slow Joy is trying to do.
Lyrically,
A Joy So Slow only gets more confusing. The album jumps from songs about broken hearts, only to dive into a stretch of songs about love and dedication. The lack of constancy creates a muddy incoherency that further detracts from what should be a very pleasant listen. The lively “Te Amo,” while probably being one of the better songs on the record, doesn’t really make sense in the context of the whole album. It certainly doesn’t help the flow of the record and while lyrics are usually the absolute last thing I worry about in writing a review, for the first time in my life I actually felt like the lyrics were detracting from the experience of the record.
It's really a shame, because this album could have actually been great. I’m probably carping on it a little bit too much, even. The only reason why is because the three track stretch from “Crawl iii” to “Bittersweet” is legitimately gorgeous, and showcases the kind of talent that Slow Joy has. I’m being harsh because these three tunes are exactly what the rest of the album is not—lush, lovely, well-paced, and every other adjective that I haven’t used to describe the rest of the album. They aren’t even energetic! They are
whole. It’s a small sample of what Slow Joy is capable of, but I hate to see an artist waste their potential when I can see what they are able to create. Of course, the album face-plants once again with the closer, but I think you’re getting my point—
A Joy So Slow had the potential to be a beautiful album. Unfortunately, Slow Joy spends so much time half-building the album that the result is far less than it could have been. Again, I’m probably being unfair, but if you’re going to do something,
do it; and in the case of
A Joy So Slow At Times I Don't Think It's Coming, Esteban Flores simply didn’t.
