WLUWD - Tristam

"WLUWD" is an instrument of emotion and evocation, of melancholy and grief, of hope and love.

Tristam's debut album is the culmination of a complete reversal of expecations. After years of producing electro and old-school brostep on Monstercat and Onyx Four (his own label), his two-year-break from producing led to a sudden evolution into the electropop landscape, with "WLUWD" (standing for "With Love Until We Die", sharing a name with the closing track) being his final release of that genre before going inactive. But I'm all for it, because Tristam has a voice that was born to do this kind of stuff. His vocal delivery is powerful and raw, backed by both instrumental and electronic production, and he is able to inject emotion in any number of ways—whether it's the melancholic "Violence", the hopeful "1992" or the evocative "Different". The voice is a powerful tool, make no mistake, and oftentimes that's forgotten amidst the synths and basses of electronic music, but "WLUWD" channels Tristam's voice to its best; it's pretty simple compared to other albums I've reviewed, and compared to other albums within the electronic sphere, but its simplicity contributes to its beauty. Simplicity in its production, perhaps—like the piano and dissonance in "Black Beauty", there's a more minimal instrumentation for every track, suffused with clean vocal chops—but complex in its emotion and its lyricism. The lyricism is the second core aspect of "WLUWD" (the first being the vocals, of course), and Tristam excels once again. His songwriting is eloquent, toying with elegant vocabulary and powerful imagery, almost as spellbinding as the voice that sings them. And, at the end of the day, what more could a vocal-driven album want, other than a formidable combination of lyricism and voice?

I'll refrain from commenting on the cohesiveness, as a more emotion-oriented album like this doesn't pertain to narratives or atmospheric and instead thrives on its evocativeness, but there is still something "WLUWD" feels like it misses out on—engagement. As a holistic project, it doesn't succeed in keeping me engaged the whole way through, and although each individual track is fantastic in its own right, evoking its emotions flawlessly, the album is quite of a drag to get through, particularly towards the end where it all feels very similar. Tracks in the album struggle to stand out, and sometimes the songs have a tendency to end abruptly, which does feel like it detracts from the project's overall quality. But you can't fault Tristam's aptitude to vocalize tender, wistful, painfully relatable sentiment.