It tells a simple story, but one that fluctuates seamlessly through dynamic musical styles. Engaging myself in a soothingly systematic activity like driving shed light on just how evenly paced and naturally composed the album is. However, the experience of driving while playing IGOR revealed an entirely new facet of the album. The first few times I listened to it, I devoted all of my focus to the listen, usually sitting down.
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One of the most fascinating aspects of IGOR is how different the album sounds based on one’s surroundings. The effect of this contradiction conveys a hopeless longing, a futile wish to slow time and alter the imminent. Despite describing the quickly crumbling facade of a relationship, the beat is mystical, spacey and relatively slower than the rest of the album. In the song “RUNNING OUT OF TIME,” Tyler develops a tension between substance and style. The sense of haunting inevitability Tyler lays out in “EARFQUAKE” with the line “’Cause when it all comes crashing down I’ll need you” persists throughout the album. It easily stands as one of the album’s highlights, even if it’s not the most ambitious of Tyler’s works to date. “EARFQUAKE,” the song that kicks off this journey, is one of Tyler’s catchiest ever, recalling the pleasantly swaying chords of “Boredom” with a more poignant edge (and without the infectious summeriness of Rex Orange County). But for the remainder of IGOR, the anxiety that Tyler places under his unique microscope involves falling in and out of love. The first track, “IGOR’S THEME,” is nothing more than a tone-setter for the rest of the album, following a simple, compelling synth riff played over energetic drums. With IGOR, coming to peace with himself doesn’t mean these anxieties will cease for Tyler, but rather that his ability to overcome them is improving. WOLF is the consummate example of this tendency, exploring the self-consuming angst of fatherly absence. Many of Tyler’s albums act like operating tables for specific anxieties, unafraid to bloody the scalpel in the procedure. The album, at its darkly tranquil core, traverses the gradual process of accepting existential uncertainty. Where Flower Boy is zany and bright, IGOR holds back, rueful at its happiest. Transparency suits him.In terms of Tyler’s eclectic discography, IGOR is probably most similar to Flower Boy, but to call it a continuation of Flower Boy ’s jazzy weightlessness would be misleading.
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The album makes plain what many of Tyler’s ardent defenders have been saying for years: the bomb-throwing, slur-wielding agent of chaos is really just a lonely kid who knows how to deflect. Skeptics have tried to equate Tyler’s writing on Flower Boy with the litany of alter egos and characters that peppered his earlier LPs, but his struggle with isolation and self-acceptance feels deeply realized. He plays the hopeless romantic on the goopy “See You Again” and brags about “kissing white boys since 2004” on “I Ain’t Got Time!” On the astounding “Garden Shed,” he steps out of the closet with an extended verse that’s confessional, nervous and hopeful all at once. Tyler’s newfound restraint is remarkable, but it’s overshadowed by the fact that many of Flower Boy‘s tracks acknowledge his attraction to men. And the album relies on a rich, distinctly Californian palette: reds, pinks, sprays of seafoam. He leans into the melodic instincts and jazzy textures that have characterized his best work. On Flower Boy, he sings and raps about his anxiety and fear with disarming sincerity. Vulnerability has always been a fundamental part of Tyler’s music, but it’s typically been couched in anger and disillusionment.
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Flower Boy, his fourth studio album, is a welcome surprise: a focused, sentimental statement of purpose.