A startling debut from a young Canadian RnB artist with huge potential.
The Weeknd is 21-year-old Toronto resident Abel Tesfaye. House of Balloons is his debut album, distributed freely online, and it’s quite unlike any other RnB collection to have emerged in 2011. Thanks to a Twitter leg-up from fellow Toronto artist Drake, Tesfaye has seen his underground tracks edge towards the mainstream, and earlier this month House of Balloons made the shortlist for the Polaris Prize, Canada’s equivalent of the Mercury. Come 19 September Tesfaye could be both $30,000 better off – that’s the prize money on offer – and in a position to genuinely vie for album-of-2011 top spots.
The foundation stones have certainly been laid. At the end of June, House of Balloons featured on numerous best-of-2011-so-far lists – number nine at Stereogum, number one at Complex; a spot on Spin’s (unranked) list of the best 25 – and was the highest-rated album of the period according to Metacritic, ahead of PJ Harvey and Bon Iver. The stage is set, then, for this to really impress come December’s shuffle of the past-12-months pack. Only, Tesfaye isn’t limiting himself to just this release – due in the summer and autumn respectively are Thursday and Echoes of Silence, wholly new collections. It’s entirely feasible, based on the quality of House of Balloons, that this single artist could have three entries in the upper reaches of many top albums lists.
Lees de rest van deze review op BBC CD recensies (Engels)
Bron: BBC Music