This new Madison Beer album is a textbook example of a songwriter finding a lane and sticking to it. The formula is certainly workable, albeit a bit on the gloomy side and often lacking in colour. It does makes sense given how much the album defaults to wallowing in depressed relationship melodrama, but part of me reckons Silence Between Songs should be a lot better than it is.
I’ll give Madison Beer this: she’s certainly trying. This album certainly isn’t interested in stylistic consistency, but sometimes that can work to its detriment when the lyrical tone and musical tone misalign in awkward ways. ‘Nothing Matters But You’ is a fairly straightforward love song, but the track sounds more ominous and ghostly than romantic. It’s a similar case on ‘Home To Another One’, a weirdly euphoric post-breakup song that’s going for a dance-pop exuberance with the overweight synthesisers .
The detachment is probably intentional, as Madison Beer sings about emotional struggles and being engulfed by her own depression a lot on this album, especially at the start. ‘Spinin’ has her questioning whether time is even moving forward at all as she feels so static in her depression, and ‘Envy The Leaves’ has her jealous of how the natural world seems to continue in a cycle without a care in the world about her or anyone else’s problems (although, why that garish outdo is tacked onto the end of that song I’ll never know).
The great hook on ’17’, the tighter bass line that lends some sensual swell to ‘Sweet Relief’, the brighter optimism of the jaunty ‘I Wonder’, all of these are decent moments, but I’m not yet won over on Madison Beer as a songwriter just yet. Not only does she not have a ton of distinctive vocal personality, but she reminds me a lot of Selena Gomez in her writing and overall presentation. What lets her down is how impersonal her observations of love, heartbreak and depression feel. ‘Dangerous’ is a great example. I want to get swept away in the grand orchestral swell, but when there’s so little detailed offered about the circumstances that led up to the breakup, I’m struggling to get invested.
The best songs on this album are the ones that feel the most personal. ‘Ryder’ is a touching, hopeful tribute to her younger brother that ends with the promise that they’ll be alright despite their hardships, and ‘At Your Worst’ is a remarkably vulnerable post-breakup song where the partner’s self destructive nature ruins everything, and however much she would love to lash out at them, deep down she knows that she’s not all that different, made all the more complicated by lingering feelings. It’s a gut punch that the rest of the album doesn’t come close to matching.
Silence Between Songs is an album that shows potential, but more refinement is needed for me to be totally sold on Madison Beer. In spite of this, she probably has a great album in her somewhere.
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