ThereвЂ™s a reason: Beauty Behind the Madness is effectively a collection of individual pop singles, and most pop singles donвЂ™t tend to depend on imaginative, panoramic writing to be commercially successful. However the writing should at least invite intrigue, and itвЂ™s hard to be even partially involved in whatвЂ™s going on here. Of course classically in R&B lyrics themselves are somewhat secondary to the delivery and structure of the vocal performance. She exists merely as a set piece, enabling Abel to thrash out some glaringly reductive thesis on trauma and sexuality ('In the night she hear him calling/In the night sheвЂ™s dancing to relieve the pain'), all on top of an incongruously anthemic instrumental piece.

ThereвЂ™s no attempt to bring this character to life. ItвЂ™s a particularly egregious piece of storytelling that doesnвЂ™t even try to understand its complex subject matter. The only properly tangible narrative that doesnвЂ™t take place entirely in AbelвЂ™s head is found on 'In the Night', a genuinely baffling attempt to tell the story of a girl (itвЂ™s inferred she's a stripper) damaged by a sexual trauma in her childhood. The imagery is limited, and there are no real events (bar the fucked up phone calls at half-past five, on 'The Hills') and little conflict external to AbelвЂ™s tiresome vacillating and incessant fretting.Д®ven the love interests, who are ostensibly so central in this drama, are deprived of a voice of their own: itвЂ™s Abel who invariably speaks on their behalf (вЂњThatвЂ™s why you always call me/Cause youвЂ™re scared to be lovedвЂќ.) It all starts to sound a bit delusional. Because these relationships are rarely anchored with a sense of place or persons, to bring any of what we hear to life. How much you actually care is a different matter. Whether thatвЂ™s Abel tentatively negating it (вЂњTo say that weвЂ™re in love is dangerousвЂќ) or blindly pursuing it (вЂњEven though youвЂ™ll break my heart, my heart/ImmвЂ™a need youвЂќ.) And AbelвЂ™s vocals do a good enough job at conveying this agony. There is however greater affection, sensitivity and a more serious love focus on this record. Come the big confessional, youвЂ™ve stopped caring lines like, 'IвЂ™m a prisoner to my addiction/IвЂ™m a prisoner to a life thatвЂ™s so empty and so cold/IвЂ™m a prisoner to my decisions,' are so well worn they regress into wholesale caricature. There appears to be no real motivation to portray this gross spectacle in any new or interesting light ('I just made another killinвЂ™/ImmвЂ™a spend it all on bitches/EverybodyвЂ™s fucking, everybodyвЂ™s fucking/Pussy on the house, everybody fucking,' is one such example), and thereвЂ™s little evidence of Abel transcending or subverting his status as the depressive protagonist, clinging to a bottle of Alize and sulking disconsolately in the corner at a party. Except, this was what informed his older records hearing it all over again only feels like running headlong into genuine artistic impasse. It might be tempting to treat the superficiality in a lot of AbelвЂ™s writing as in some way artfully constructed, as faithful to a kind of reluctance on his part to assess the extent of the damage done. ThereвЂ™s a frustrating sense that weвЂ™ve been here before.ДЄs on Kissland, Abel repeatedly slipped into stark self-parody. The problem though is that weвЂ™re offered no fresh perspective on this cycle of spectacular self-absorption, hedonism and self-destruction. On Beauty Behind the Madness we encounter Abel in much the same place, finding little beauty behind whatever madness is actually supposed to be unfolding, finding little of any substance at all. Which might not have been so disagreeable had the writing been more adventurous or, even better, more self-aware. Only instead of using this new, amplified weirdness in his personal life as a catalyst to break out of the eerie, insular prism of Trilogy, Kissland continued on in the same vein, almost lethargically. On his long-awaited follow up, Kissland, Abel transported these same themes into a new, alien setting: global fame, and all the disjuncture and chaos accompanying celebrity and notoriety. When The Weeknd broke around 2011 with a triplet of mix-tapes serialised a year later on Trilogy, AbelвЂ™s haunted portraits of fucked up nights/mornings/afternoons in Toronto were lucid and fascinating - sometimes ugly, sometimes beautiful.

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