Album Review: Autre Ne Veut - Anxiety

The album title speaks for itself as each of the ten songs lies heavily in the emotional ruffles of Arthur Ashin's anxiety from torn relationships, the end result a cohesive gallery of snapshots of a broken man.
Each song evolves with a number of lyrical and musical phases. Opener, Play By Play, introduces the record with sparkling glissandos and sensual soundscapes, symbolic of that rush-of-blood-to-the-head desire for love. But this feeling is short-lived and interjected by bitter lyrics, staggered in its delivery: “I don't wanna be there tonight/You make me whole/You make me crawl/And make me harder” – his indecision is driving him mad and it's beautifully captured. Then, before you know it there's an elevation in the mood and the listener has entered the musically liberating phase of a celebratory booty-shaking/hands-in-the-air-type singalong, because he knows he's better off without that person.

The musician/producer rehashes and represents elements of his anxiety in a number of ways: the harshly manipulated sounds as heard in the squawking sax on Counting is a perfect example, as it brilliantly and obtrusively honks at you during the most unexpected moments. But it is also through Ashin's emotionally-charged vocals, mostly sung in falsetto and layered with generous amounts of effects, that these emotions are made palpable.

Along with the squeaky-clean production, this Brooklynite has created his own personal brand of R&B, which is in part due to his combo of R&B and an unashamedly sugar-coated '80s retro aesthetic, but is mainly due to his excellent use of space, fragmented sounds and motions, which best characterise the Autre Ne Veut sound and fulfil the various shades of his anxieties.