No Frills Reviews

Confusing, messy, and occasionally very good. We know by now that Donald Glover isn’t the type to stick to just one lane, but maybe 17 lanes all at once is a bad idea

Billed as Donald Glover’s final album under the Childish Gambino moniker, and purportedly the soundtrack to a film of the same name. Although how real that project is seems increasingly questionable as very little detail has emerged other than a brief trailer. It kind of works as a pastiche of blockbuster movie soundtracks; an overlong mishmash curated to appeal to as many trends as possible. Maybe his intent here was to create an elaborate parody; that still doesn’t mean it’s actually enjoyable though. Stylistically and thematically, it’s a mess.

There’s hints that it could be a concept album as dialogue from the supposed film is interspersed between tracks, and some lyrics see him seemingly take on the character of Bando Stone. But there isn’t a clear narrative playing out across tracks, and without an actual film to accompany it, you’re left with little idea of who these characters are. Plus it’s not always clear whether he’s in character or not, as he randomly seems to revert to being Gambino and/or Glover. Perhaps Stone is intended as a fictionalised version of himself hence the blurred lines, but this is nowhere near interesting enough to make me care about where the lines between Stone, Gambino, or Glover start and stop.

It’s just as confusing musically; dreamy R&B sits alongside pop-punk, alongside trap, alongside jazz, etc. It’s eclecticism for the sake of eclecticism, like the Khruangbin-led chillout jam which seems to exist purely to say Khruangbin feature on the album. The stylistic shifts are often jarring, but without the chaotic charm of a JPEGMAFIA. It’s mostly just a collection of songs that don’t really belong together.

You get the impression that Glover was aiming for something like JPEGMAFIA’s frenzied production style on Got To Be. But with its sample of The Prodigy’s Firestarter, it feels obvious rather than innovative. That’s one of many tracks that come off as weak imitations; there’s a Drake knockoff, a Weeknd knockoff, and knockoffs of at least three eras of Kanye. For all of Glover’s ideas, they often feel like they’re just approximations of other people’s.

That said, there are plenty of good moments scattered amongst the clutter here. Lithonia is like an overblown gospel rock opera, but it works and suggests he might have pulled off a proper concept album if he could just rein his ideas in. Despite Yoshinoya starting off like Drake-lite, it develops into the purest rap moment here, with Gambino hitting bar after bar for two minutes straight. Can You Feel Me feels genuinely experimental amidst lots of faux-experimentation, merging trap flows with the sonic palette of Paul Simon’s Graceland. And, in spite of myself, I was won over by the soft-as-shit indie pop of Real Love and the pop-punk meets R&B of Running Around; what can I say, Gambino knows how to pull off a cheesy pop chorus.

If this really is the end, Bando Stone makes a fitting closing chapter for Gambino; lots of good ideas, but extremely mixed results in execution.

Best tunes: Lithonia, Yoshinoya, Dadvocate

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