What better place to mix grit with glam than Vegas? Abel croons that “in Vegas, feels so alone,” and on “Blinding Lights” he remarks that “Sin City’s cold and empty/no one around to judge. After Hours isn’t so much a return to his roots as it is a post fame-Abel reckoning with his own guilt and selfishness in the face of all the money and celebrity.

Los Angeles, in all of its glitz and glamour, lorded over the pop sheen of Beauty Behind the Madness and the braggadocio of Starboy. On After Hours, however, Abel shifts his focus from Los Angeles to Las Vegas. Abel’s mixtapes were dominated, consciously and unconsciously by the concept of Toronto. Abel sings of his substance abuse issues, a topic that has dominated most of his discography, but the real gem of his songwriting here is how he utilizes geography. The song shifts and transforms from a trippy atmospheric ballad to a synthesizer-laden track stacked with a dark bass line and raucous drums. The album’s intro “Alone Again” is a masterclass in compelling production, and it’s just a taste of the excellence that the rest of After Hours has to offer. After Hours is The Weeknd at his most sonically ambitious and it’s all tied together with songwriting that hammers consistent themes and motifs without becoming redundant or reductive. Every song works with the next to weave a tragically beautiful tapestry of heartbreak, guilt, shame, success, and self-reckoning.

Despite the instant success of the album’s singles, After Hours never feels like a collection of songs with the sole intent of scoring hits. The former, a swaggering rap-influenced declaration of his embrace of his carefree lifestyle, debuted at #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 and the latter, a sublime 80s synth-pop-influenced anthem, currently sits at #4 on the Hot 100 and is poised to become his fifth #1 hit. Towards the tail end of 2019, The Weeknd released “ Heartless” and “Blinding Lights” within days of each other. Now, The Weeknd has gifted us his fourth studio album, After Hours, the best record of 2020 so far and the culmination of all of his musical influences and the different facets of his artistry. He followed those last two highly successful albums with another chart-topping set, this time an EP by the name of My Dear Melancholy, a return to the grittier sound of his mixtape days. Have you noticed how stellar The Weeknd’s mainstream career has been? From his Gold debut album, Kiss Land, to his multi-Grammy winning sophomore album, Beauty Behind the Madness, and his chart-topping and Grammy-winning Starboy, The Weeknd has steadily progressed artistically and musically while dominating the R&B and pop spheres.

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