Broken By Desire To Be Heavenly Sent

Wow, shocker. Lewis Capaldi makes another batch of mediocre, sappy, boring ass love songs that bring nothing new or exciting to the world of adult contemporary and pop. After his snooze fest of a debut, "Divinely Uninspired To A Hellish Extent" comes this boring case of songs that go on about missing your love, finding happiness in someone else, and wishing for things in the relationship to be different. However, a lot of these songs circle around these ideas so much that the ideas begin to run into each other and hinder their progress to becoming something exemplary, or even remotely interesting.

The title track, first of all, does NOT sound like a good start for a record, feeling like a random mid-album deep cut that no one will ever talk about. With an instrumental that rubs shoulders with the Wii Sports Resort soundtrack (honestly, that does WSR a disservice), he talks about his lover finding happiness in other things and other people to the point where he hopes she still thinks about him. Like, "I hate to know I made you cry, but love to know I cross your mind..."? Ew. This just sounds like the most uninspired singer-songwriter template written in with the most lackluster, uneventful or engaging lyrics or story, lack thereof. Hell, this was probably written in his room right next to his cuck chair given this sappy ass bridge of longing lyrics.

It doesn't get much better from here on out with songs like "Haven't You Ever Been In Love Before?" just sounding like "Someone You Loved" part two and "Pointless" being the most correctly titled song on the record. Aside from the songs lacking any sort of flavor or taste, the vocal performances here are disgustingly foul, starting with songs like "Heavenly Kind Of State Of Mind" being one of the worst, including shaking rises, scratchy high notes in the chorus (could honestly apply that to every song he's ever made, to be fair), and melodies that run out like fodder for a Top 40 hitmaking machine. Another horrible use of his vocals is the cut "Any Kind Of Life" which includes maybe the most annoying chorus of the album, being nothing but Lewis' voice and extremely bland piano work, making for a song with too much room and not enough furniture. It also builds to such an overdramatic high with the strings towards the outro that I physically recoiled at how disingenuous this song feels.

Also, I need to mention the refrain on "How This Ends" that involves Lewis ascending and repeating the words, "And we bled..." until the height reached shows off the strain and even tear in his vocal cords. Perhaps the only thing that's bleeding here is our ears.

Yeah, this album is terrible. This genuinely makes Ed Sheeran's new album look like a Sufjan Stevens record in comparison. That's not to say that Ed's album was okay or bad; it was actually pretty decent, but unlike "-", this is not how you make quality contemporary pop meant to evoke some type of low-key, understated feeling of loss or heartbreak. There's no angst, there's no real pleasure, and there's no emotion because this entire album feels completely dry and in need of substance. There are very little redeemable things on this record, but the only thing that saves me from lowering the score anymore is the fact that some of the instrumentals aren't too bad or that some of the songs either sound too much like something else or are so blisteringly average that they're almost impossible to comment on due to the lack of anything fruitful or meaningful. Skip this album. I would honestly hate this album more if I decided to give it any more time, but I don't have the patience for that.

22.89

Favorite Tracks: The Pretender (I guess)
Least Favorite: Any Kind Of Life