Review Summary: Thanks for the music, now get out.
Out of all Steven Wilson’s side projects, Blackfield (Steven Wilson and Aviv Geffen) may be the project that belongs the least to him. While on their debut album, co-founder Aviv Geffen was playing the role of backseat driver and seemed like he was in only for the ride due to his minimal involvement, his contributions gradually increased with each passing album. Blackfield II felt like a genuine group effort involving both artists and represented Blackfield’s purpose the best: accessible, melancholic dark rock with a tinge of progressive, all without excess or flashy virtuoso performances. Starting with Welcome to My DNA, Wilson was getting increasingly busy with his own solo career and let Aviv Geffen take the wheel to drive the group forward. By the time next album IV was out, it no longer was Wilson’s band; he was even quoted saying “With my complete blessing, Blackfield is now under [Geffen’s] sole curatorship” and would only act as a contributor. This led to a shift in style in the music (which favored more up-tempo pop music) and diminishing returns from critics and fans.
Blackfield V came across as a surprise in 2017, with Wilson announcing his full-time return to the band, leading to their most fully realized album since their second outing. It was still unmistakably Blackfield, but the music tentatively reached in new directions and while the melancholia was still present in droves, it no longer was Blackfield's only mood. A certain optimism and desire to fight back also was coming out, while the music would remain pretty down-tempo, it no longer felt self-defeating, reflecting and agonizing. Blackfield would earn a major label contract with Warner Music Group Central Europe and release a sixth album in 2020, For The Music… and the reception for it was complete radio silence and indifference (which may or may not have been helped by the coronavirus pandemic).
For The Music continues the Blackfield journey but picks IV as the point of continuation and not Blackfield V, which means that any development from the previous album is out the window. Wilson is back to keeping a low profile, handling mixing and background vocal duties while taking the lead singer spot on a few tracks. We are treated once more to Geffen’s vision of the band, which features more in your face, energetic pop music with big hooks, distorted guitars and… auto-tuned vocals, as shown in the leading track For The Music. Now, the auto-tune usage is light and you won’t mistake this track for a chart single by a big pop artist, but the overall effect will be jarring for long-time fans. The lyrics are supposed to evoke that no matter what the current mood is, music always will have some place in your life, but even for Blackfield, the lyrics are very minimalistic and repetitive, plus they also had to put in a lot of “woo ooo ooo ooohs” to fill in the blanks between verses, which makes for a touchy first encounter with the album.
If you enjoy your Blackfield slow and depressing, you still have it in spades on this album, but you’ll always have a better time going back to earlier records. After All is a blatant rewrite of Blackfield II’s 1000 People (featuring note by note an almost identical slow piano melody) and the overall progression feels much more shallow than the original. While it is nice sounding, the derivativeness does knock off the enjoyment factor. Garden of Sin is a guitar ballad so cliché that The Offspring beat them to this melody about 26 years ago when they released the song Dirty Magic. And somehow, Geffen’s lyrics reach a low that we haven’t seen since Welcome to My DNA’s Go To Hell:
“So take your grandma's sleeping pills
And one by one swallow them
Open your dad's secret drawer
And take the gun, take it out
Ask your loved one to come ovеr
And when she comes, shoot hеr down
We're all on God's waiting list
Here in the garden of sin”
The lyrics are supposed to be sad and gripping, but everything is so over exaggerated you can’t buy the message it’s trying to relay. One would be expecting a truck will front-end the home and eject the driver in barbed wires right after. It’s So Hard tries to close the curtains of the album with an all out emotional assault with the slow cascading piano and background strings, complete with bawling lyrics about an impossible love, but it falls flat on its face by being boring. Despite being on an album called For The Music, the music itself often fails to properly paint the grandiose scenarios it tries to bring forth and feels expressionless and Geffen’s vocal delivery is very uneven throughout the album. His voice is an acquired taste and doesn’t always suit the music well, sometimes resembling mumbling and even mispronouncing words at times, which distracts the listener.
This puts the spotlight further on the poppier compositions, as they now must carry the album. Under My Skin is the album’s lead single and offers the best summary as to where Blackfield is headed. Never have we heard before a composition from this group that sounded this intense, anthemic and catchy. It’s the complete opposite kind of music you’d hear on the group’s earlier albums and truth be told, it’s a fine composition. The only problem with it is just… does a song like this really is what one would want out of Blackfield? Do you listen to Blackfield to get your dose of energetic, in your face pop? Sadly, we don’t get a proper response to this question, as there is only one other big pop song on the album, Summer’s Gone. It definitely does not reach the same heights and features some of the whiniest synthesizers on the album, which is bad since the entire song is keyboard-based. The vocal delivery on this one is amongst the best that Geffen manages on the album and will assuredly drill the track deep in your brain, but the words run out way too quick and despite a brief 3 minute runtime, the track feels like it’s out of ideas by the half-time mark.
What about Steven Wilson now? Where does he fit in the whole picture? His presence is mostly felt on Over And Over, Falling and White Nights, which are the 3 songs where Steven takes lead vocal duties. His appearances follow the pattern of the album: uneven. Over And Over feels like a less interesting rewrite of at least 2 other past Blackfield songs, Falling is likely the best slower song of the album and features the kind of interplay you’d expect on past albums (which is explainable by this being the only song Wilson got co-writing credits for) and White Nights manages to establish a nice use of tension and dread with its unexpected chord progression in the chorus. Wilson’s vocal delivery will be of no surprise for past Blackfield listeners but his clearer delivery serves to remind that yes, this is a Blackfield record. The familiar feeling does help to set foot on an album with lots of unfamiliar elements.
In the end, Blackfield’s major label debut comes loaded with more questions than answers, especially as it comes loaded with 9 tracks clocking at a mere 30 minutes. Who could tell how the pandemic affected the record’s turnout has never been determined, but this album feels surprisingly timid and uncertain of the way to go and doesn’t lay enough cards on the table to show a full picture. Do Blackfield continue with the bombastic pop songs or should they dial back down to being a slow, more intimate rock group? Unfortunately, the album lays down clear pros and cons for each approach and neither way feel like the right one in the end. Who knows what the future will hold, but one thing is certain: Geffen will dictate where Blackfield goes. If you are a Aviv Geffen fan, give the album a quick peek. For what’s worth, For The Music may be Blackfield’s least engaging record of their catalog, barely edged out by IV.
