‘Smithereens’ is Joji’s 3rd studio album, released on the 4th November 2022. Following his highly successful previous albums ‘Nectar’ and ‘Ballads’, will ‘Smithereens’ live up to these high standards?
Disc 1
Glimpse of Us
The incredibly popular single from the album ‘Glimpse of Us’ deserves all the praise it gets. The beautiful melancholic melody mixed with soft vocals of Joji, truly accredits this song no short of a masterpiece.
Feeling Like The End
Only being 1min 42 sec, the song seems to be a step away from Joji’s usual melancholy sound. While the beat is relatively catchy, it fails to be anything special compared to other tracks.
Die for You
One of my favourite songs off of the album! The emotional rawness and heart-rending lyricism, makes ‘Die for You’ a compelling and emotional song. With the beautiful use of the piano, heartbreak has never sounded so glorious.
Before The Day Is Over
In this track, Joji is hoping to restore a past relationship, which honestly hits hard. While not as powerful as ‘Die for you’ and ‘Glimpse of Us’ it is still a good song. The use of backing vocals reminds me of those used in Self Control by Frank Ocean, a great song recommendation if you enjoyed this.
Dissolve
‘Who are we? Who have we become?’
The heavily auto-tuned vocals add an upbeat approach to a song with such sorrowful lyrics. While I liked the stylistic approach, I felt that it hid the true sadness behind the song.
Disc 2
NIGHT RIDER
The shift to ‘Disc 2’ and notable use of capitals in the song titles, is a very obvious change from ‘Dissolve’ to ‘NIGHT RIDER.’ While I don’t dislike the song, I feel it misses the mark and doesn’t utilise Joji’s talent to the maximum. While I like the change in tempo, beat etc it is one of my least favourites on the album.
BLAHBLAHBLAH DEMO
BLAHBLAHBLAH DEMO gives a different approach to the others. The use of distortion and reverb, truly makes the song in my opinion due to big change in stylistic approach.
YUKON (INTERLUDE)
WOW. On reflection, I was quite shocked on how much I loved this song. The upbeat tempo mixed with Joji’s vocals gave a breath of fresh air to this album and is up there with one of my favourites of his songs EVER.
1AM FREESTYLE
1AM FREESTYLE is the final song of the album and is simply beautiful. The blend of vocals is absolutely stunning! My only criticism is that I wish it was longer!!!
The album as a whole had some amazing songs and utilised Joji’s melancholic sounds very well. Although I thoroughly enjoyed this album, it is probably my least favourite of Joji’s works. I do think some of the songs were beautiful, including ‘YUKON’, ‘Die for you’ and ‘1AM FREESTYLE’, but I feel many of the songs didn’t showcase Joji’s talent as much as they should. What did you think of the album?