Once more, taking the boy out of the boy band
One day, the world blinked, and in that time BROCKHAMPTON went from total supernova success, dire irrecoverable controversies, recovery from said irrecoverable controversies, to a dwindling little dying light, and resigned to the depths of everyone’s 2017-19 Spotify playlists. Heavy enough was BROCKHAMPTON’s crown when carried by fifteen or so Kanye West web forum users, and going at it alone comes with its own baggage of expectancies from a tumultuous six years.
From the outset of Ghost, Joba is intent on setting himself apart from all of that. Well, he honestly never had an issue with setting himself apart in the past of Brockhampton’s wide talent pool, by virtue of his manic ability to find new bizarre vocal inflections to try on each track. Here, on a more gospelly piano piece designed around getting in as much of a demonstration of his singing chops as possible, an initial worry creeps in as to if this album will have any points worth making, or if it will simply just be intent on proving one specific point.
Once we hit American Fever, Joba treats us to another bizarre contortion of his voice with an unstable and frenzied crooner-style to fit a choppy sendup of americana. Well, that is to say that this song somewhat sounds like it’s meant to be that, all very marching-band horns and the like. Lyrically however, we don’t get much of an insight into the troubles of the American dream, beyond to say that “the stars and stripes are coming for you”. Ooh, very spooky!
It’s a largely fun, jaunty number, until it kind of struggles to end. Juuuust keeps on going. Probably would benefit a lot from a minute or so shaved off somewhere.
With a bit of a shaky beginning to this project, once we hit into the smoother and jazzier rhythms of Lonestar and Doormat, we find the style sweetspot. As such a vivid kind of vocalist, Joba is at his best when he isn’t fighting for the zaniness podium against his own backing instruments, and yet, of course, we need something to play off of. Everything feels coordinated with cohesion here, with plenty of expression jumping in and out from all members of the cast at the exact points where they are needed; like all the fun of going to a genuinely impressively-practiced primary school play, but if the simile was less needlessly infantalising.
This scale swings a little bit too far the other way near the end, across New Beginnings, People Need People, and Gospel of the Moon. These far lower-key tracks leave the consistently underdeveloped lyricism of this project exposed and fending for itself, each line trawling frustratingly from one surface level metaphor to the next. “That gravity get down on me”? What? I guess it does? While the more mellow tone of these tracks could be suited to Joba, it’s a struggle to obtain one of those things called “emotions” out of these boring little words.
It feels like a very easy way to cop-out on saying mean things about someone’s brave artistic endeavour to tack on that I see a lot of unexplored potential here. And you’re correct! I find it very easy to do exactly that! Here it is then:
The glimmers of a wholly unique soul keep peeking out of this project in a couple clear hits, and the bravery in style and production has spat out some genuinely cool song-structures; more magic could certainly still be wringed out here. Whatever bravery is here needs to be set towards the lyrics, which are currently scared to commit on what emotion they’re even representing, let alone explore in any coherency what feelings and experiences make this undeniably unique guy, so unique.
Can you ask for more of the same but better from someone who doesn’t do the same thing twice? Who knows, but this try around gets a 5.5/10.