Neon Trees - I Can Feel You Forgetting Me

This is an album that caught my eye a couple of weeks ago, and I wanted to listen to it when it came out, mainly due to its quite fascinating cover art, and how it contrasts quite a bit to all their other covers. Now I haven’t listened to Neon Trees before, nor had I even heard of them before this, so this was my first dive into their music and… it’s fair to say I did like it.

This album was a lot more fun than I anticipated it to be, especially from its opening track, which features a lot of talk about drugs and loss, it’s quite a depressing opener, but one of the best tracks for sure, so we open on a major highlight. I was expecting a lot more songs like the opener but, I didn’t really get that. This album is a very poppy, electronic album, it has a lot of synths and a lot of energy to it. Its focus seems to rely more on the sound and the vibe it goes for than its writing and lyrics, not to say this album doesn’t have some good lyrics, again the opening track has some really nice lyrics to it, heavy and relatable, dropping a couple of bombshells too. It seems though that this album’s biggest priority is giving you a good time over insightful lyricism, which appears more prominent later on in the record.

So we had a really strong start, does it get better or worse? Well, it doesn’t really get better but I wouldn’t say it gets worse. A lot of the album rides off of the hype generated from its opener. This is a case where every song was made to “be a hit” and a lot of them do succeed with that, but there are a few duds. Songs like Used to Like and Skeleton Boy are fun bops that rely more on the atmosphere than its lyrics. Its lyrics are definitely not bad for these examples, but they aren’t anything majorly insightful, as mentioned earlier. Other songs though, especially nearer the end like When The Night is Over and New Best Friend’s worse lyricism seems to outshine the actual music, and by this point the sound has grown a little stale.

What I’ve noticed is that the album opens on a bang, and slowly dies out by the end, but I don’t think this was intentional. It feels instead their sound being run dry and by the end being stretched thin. It begins to sound same-y which doesn’t help with the worse writing that appears here. What began as quite an interesting experience ends on a low point, that doesn’t really make me want to go through the entire thing again.

Did I get what I expected when I went into this? No not really, but did I enjoy it nonetheless? I’d say so. While this isn’t something you should get your hopes incredibly high for, it is definitely a fun album with some relatable songs and overall, all the songs are fun. I wouldn’t say any of these songs are bad, it’s only by the end the album begins to drag a little, it’s good this is only 33 minutes long. It’s quick and easy to digest, I’ll probably return to this a lot considering its very short length, it’s an easy listen and it’s fun, why wouldn’t I!

Favourite Tracks: Nights, Used to Like, Holy Ghost, Skeleton Boy, Everything is Killing Me
Least Favourite Tracks: When The Night Is Over, New Best Friend