Don't Get Too Close - Skrillex

The second of his two 2023 albums, Skrillex dials it down and sets a more commercially-appealing, clubby tone for "Don't Get Too Close".

Very rare is it for an artist to release two albums in the same year. Rarer is it for them to release two albums on consecutive days. "Don't Get Too Close" achieves both, releasing the very day after its cousin "Quest For Fire". And the amount of parallels between the two are uncanny — Skrillex structures these tracks to near perfection. With the intro of each album following the exact same motif with the exact same feature of Bobby Raps, and the finale of each album doing the same with Bibi Bourelly — alongside several shared lyrics and samples between the two projects — Skrillex executes his parallelism well. But the trouble is, "Don't Get Too Close" will always live in the shadow of "Quest For Fire". Where his first 2023 album was experimental-leaning and with a grand emphasis on deep UK basslines and phenomenal drumwork, his second one leans back, relaxes, and does comparatively very little. "Don't Get Too Close" suffers from its length, first and foremost, being nearly 15 minutes shorter than its cousin album — but it also suffers from its stylistic choices. Aiming for a more commercial outlook, Skrillex brings in several mainstream features, from the likes of PinkPantheress to Justin Bieber, to Swae Lee and Don Toliver and Kid Cudi, and he ends up taking a backseat. The vocal features do a fantastic job at the vocal elements, sure, but much of the hip-hop leaning influences don't interest me too much (stylistically) and the production isn't quite there to back it, with the pop-rap taking the spotlight and leaving very little room for anything else. Sure, "Don't Get Too Close" is a little more vibey, a little more digestible, a little more clubby, but also perhaps a little bit too diluted — especially relative to "Quest For Fire". Skrillex attempts a couple more alternative genres, like house or liquid drum n bass, but it's just not enough to keep adding fuel to the production side of this project, which — particularly towards the midsection — dies out rather quickly. Though "Don't Get Too Close" starts off strong, and finishes off strong, nothing of note really happens in the midsection.

I appreciate this album will never escape comparisons to "Quest For Fire", and I also appreciate that my rating is perhaps lower than it otherwise would be without comparisons (although perhaps not, we'll never know), but, considering they are so clearly interlinked, a review that doesn't factor in comparisons would be, to me, innaccurate. I do enjoy most of the vocal features here, even the ones that abide by pop-rap tropes that aren't typically my style, but I just don't feel like "Don't Get Too Close" achieves enough in its runtime to be thoroughly engaging as a product.