Album Review - Joji: Smithereens
SOFT 6/10
There are many eras of Joji that his fans might know him from. There’s the start of his career that consisted solely of emotional crooning to lo-fi beats on the In Tongues (2017) EP. This period of Joji’s career featured extremely skeletal production with a heavy emphasis on his vocal harmonies and layering, but sometimes felt uninspired. Where most fans probably took note of the singer’s potential was after the release of his boisterous 2018 ballad “SLOW DANCING IN THE DARK” which was fittingly included on his first full-length album, BALLADS 1 (2018). The amorphous form of Joji’s sound on his first release began to be fleshed out on this debut in the form of a reliance on choruses and further outsourced instrumentation. Nectar (2020) was released 2 years later, and while it was more sonically consistent, there was certainly no “SLOW DANCING IN THE DARK” featured on it. Joji is often cryptic about his music rollouts, so when Smithereens’ (2022) desperately powerful lead single, “Glimpse of Us”, was released, anticipation skyrocketed for the album that followed. Ironically, it feels as though “Glimpse of Us” was this new LP’s “SLOW DANCING IN THE DARK” in terms of it being a general outlier in quality from the rest of the tracks.
“Glimpse of Us” provides insight into Joji’s romantic psyche, regarding how he is incapable of moving forward without comparing his future lovers to a past one. It could have easily fallen into the casually melodrama that pop-ballads can often become, but its pacing and lyrical substance provide it with a cinematic quality that cannot be ignored. “Feeling Like The End” almost feels like a prequel to its predecessor, as it’s a short but sweet reflection on a relationship that feels as though it has run its natural course. If “Feeling Like The End” is the prequel, then “Die For You” is the sequel to “Glimpse of Us”; Joji is now in a different state of his life but still hangs on to the minute details that doomed a prior relationship. As was often on BALLADS 1 though, “Die For You” occasionally just feels like an emotional ride where you are waiting to hear its musical climax in its pre-chorus and hook. “Dissolve” fits along the relationship-centric focus of the three tracks I have already mentioned, but it has more of a creative identity (excluding “Glimpse of Us”). Joji appropriately implements auto-tone to hit certain nooks and crannies of the sound he’s attempting to present with recurring guitar and occasional synth hits to coat it.
This is unfortunately where my compliments end for the most part. “YUKON (INTERLUDE) sees Joji regressing back to the early portions of his career that consisted of monotonous vocals with no true vision over a drab piano melody. It’s hard to believe that “NIGHT RIDER” isn’t a leftover from BALLADS 1, so while it isn’t offensive in execution, it just does not feel like Joji is trying to step out of his creative comfort zone. “1AM FREESTYLE” has fantastic production, but Joji mostly wastes it by aimlessly whining about hollow romance for the entire runtime. “BLAHBLAHBLAH DEMO” certainly sounds as unfinished as the title suggests with its haphazard trap drums that only place more scrutiny on Joji’s singing that may as well just be melodic rambling.
SMITHEREENS hit a nerve with its lead single, “Glimpse of Us”, and it feels as though Joji capitalized upon that sound with tracks like “Feeling Like The End”, “Die For You” and “Dissolve”. On the other side of this album though, it features extremely raw and unpolished inclusions such as “BLAHBLAHBLAH DEMO” and “YUKON (INTERLUDE). Even with the songs that sound genuinely completed, the album’s absurdly short runtime presents the LP almost as a rapidly unprepared reaction to the meteoric success of its initial offering. Many of the creative aspects of SMITHEREENS are either a regression to Joji’s start as a hopeful SoundCloud vocalist or simply an approach to styles that the singer is already comfortable with.