Each track certainly has its own personality, but the album never feels like a pastiche of two or three disparate extremes. Interestingly, even with the more commercial pop approach, I found myself enjoying almost every track on first listen. Add in a Will Wood guest appearance on the final track (with a sort of “Sexy and I Know It” vibe) and you’ve got quite an interesting combination of weirdness. Then there’s “Built to Burn” which feels like it could have been on the Hamilton soundtrack with its clapping and vocal rhythms. “Learning to Be Lost” is perhaps the prime example of the full spectrum of James’ sound, where strings, auxiliary percussion, and fat bass all weave together for a beautiful, haunting effect. I’m not normally a fan of over-programmed songs, and thankfully I would never dare to describe these arrangements as over-programmed. Still, the new approach to production is more bombastic and immersive, and even songs about pain and darkness feel so beefy and verdant. There’s still a certain spookiness to behold: “First Date” is a prime example, with references to kissing in cemeteries and befriending otherworldly spirits. “Ferryman” brings an almost-humorous look at betrayal to close out the record. And there’s plenty of variety between tracks, ranging from fast-paced club hits like “Devils & Rebels” to the vocal-layered balladry of “Must We”. Misery is introduced as a main player early on (as a nod to “Have a Seat Misery” from Counterfeit Arcade), and the segue tracks have AM-radio narration. Rest assured, the album is still interspersed with narrative tricks that help cement the cinematic tradition James is known for. It’s a big switch, but I’m certainly not complaining one bit. But just as easily, he calls to mind more amorphous artists like Nova Amor. James abandons some of the macabre for a bit of steampunk take on 90s and early 00s pop, and it frankly just works. I’m not sure what prompted the change-up here, and in some ways it’s similar to when Taylor Swift dropped Reputation (quite possibly the only time I’ll reference Tay in a review). There’s still the core of James’ trademark sound, most assuredly, but there’s a fair bit more of the modern era as well. Even the video for “Devils & Rebels” is draped in neon paint. So color me surprised when the first proper track on his latest record features programmed drums and the je-ne-sais-quoi of Justin Timberlake. Continued abuse of our services will cause your IP address to be blocked indefinitely.Shayfer James has a history of being known for darker, vaudeville-type arrangements. Please fill out the CAPTCHA below and then click the button to indicate that you agree to these terms. If you wish to be unblocked, you must agree that you will take immediate steps to rectify this issue. If you do not understand what is causing this behavior, please contact us here. If you promise to stop (by clicking the Agree button below), we'll unblock your connection for now, but we will immediately re-block it if we detect additional bad behavior. Overusing our search engine with a very large number of searches in a very short amount of time.Using a badly configured (or badly written) browser add-on for blocking content.Running a "scraper" or "downloader" program that either does not identify itself or uses fake headers to elude detection.Using a script or add-on that scans GameFAQs for box and screen images (such as an emulator front-end), while overloading our search engine.There is no official GameFAQs app, and we do not support nor have any contact with the makers of these unofficial apps. Continued use of these apps may cause your IP to be blocked indefinitely. This triggers our anti-spambot measures, which are designed to stop automated systems from flooding the site with traffic. Some unofficial phone apps appear to be using GameFAQs as a back-end, but they do not behave like a real web browser does.Using GameFAQs regularly with these browsers can cause temporary and even permanent IP blocks due to these additional requests. If you are using the Brave browser, or have installed the Ghostery add-on, these programs send extra traffic to our servers for every page on the site that you browse, then send that data back to a third party, essentially spying on your browsing habits.We strongly recommend you stop using this browser until this problem is corrected. The latest version of the Opera browser sends multiple invalid requests to our servers for every page you visit.The most common causes of this issue are: Your IP address has been temporarily blocked due to a large number of HTTP requests.
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