REVIEW #1 - 80
A debut album isn’t easy. It’s an intimidating first step into the industry, announcing yourself to the world, all at once introducing your voice and along with it, often the most personal stories of your life. Musicians spend years crafting and perfecting these first impressions before they are ready for the world, fuelled by a lifetime of practising instruments, writing songs and making countless mistakes along the way. But for Xylon Bolt, real name Sean O’Pry, music hasn’t always been number one. The former model is new to the music industry, making the transition only within the last couple of years, so the process of composing his first impression to the world is perhaps even more intimidating.
Xylon Bolt hasn’t had the lifetime of experience honing his sound or the years of living from gig to gig. Because of this, some may say Xylon hasn’t “put in the work” and they may be quick to dismiss the young up-and-comer. But for what the young up-and-comer lacks in experience, he makes up for in enthusiasm and effort.
‘Adolescence’ is a cohesive, fully-realised debut that introduces a new male voice that is sure to hold a place on radio stations around the world for a long time. The twelve track album is packed full of radio hits ready to go, including standouts such as the almost Michael Jackson sounding ‘Blues By The Bar’ to the upbeat, catchy ‘Manic Passions’ featuring a couple of other new models-turned-singers in pop duo CaKe. Bolt shows right away he has a talent for producing these types of tunes - easy to listen to, dance to and have stuck in your head for days. But beyond that, the 28-year-old gives us a glimpse into a deeper side of his songwriting potential. Tracks like hit single ‘Toronto Trains’ are an example of Bolt getting the balance between radio-friendly and inspired, personal lyricism just right.
As commendable as ‘Adolescence’ is for it’s well-rounded, cohesive sound, there is a certain level of safeness that slightly holds the album back from reaching its full potential. And while it’s easy to understand why an artist in Bolt’s position could be hesitant to take too many creative risks, ‘Adolescence’ could have benefited from exploring more of the complexities associated with it’s namesake. Adolescence is a time of exploration and confusion - new experiences, new emotions, struggling to find and accept identities. On one track, the brilliant ‘Kaleidoscope’, Xylon offers a small taste of a more complex, explorative piece of music, but it’s short-lived. Perhaps he is preparing us for more to come. Perhaps album #2?
All-in-all, ‘Adolescence’ more than achieves its goal of introducing the world to Xylon Bolt – the energetic, young-at-heart popstar with a knack for writing hits. We can’t wait to see what he does next.
Essential tracks:
‘Toronto Trains’, ‘Blues By The Bar’, ‘Manic Passions’, ‘Kaleidoscope’
REVIEW #2 - 40
Xylon Bolt, stage name of male model turned X-Factor Enthusiast and international singer Sean O'Pry, has had quite the tumultuous journey as an artist. After dozens of scrapped attempts at releasing an album, Bolt has finally released his debut LP, a 12 track effort entitled Adolescence. And from this reviewer's standpoint, it seems the album's title describes the contents of all 12 tracks a little too well.
To be blunt, the album sounds like it was written by a lovelorn teenager, still new at this whole "songwriting" thing. The tracks, at best, are actually quite enjoyable, with the top 10 single featuring Lindsay Lohan, Cruel, a highlight from the album, showcasing both Lohan and O'Pry's strongest writing. The track tells the story of a toxic relationship with an unhappy ending, with genius quips like "Twisted blame games, shattered photo frames, sleep talk, muttering your ex's names" and a delightfully vicious chorus, proclaiming to the other, "Why'd you have to be so cruel?"
Another such standout is Blues By The Bar, a self penned track by O'Pry which makes a bold statement of dedication to your craft, in his case music, despite what others may think. The strongest track on the album perhaps, it's high points fall upon the first chorus, broodingly and melodically painting a beautiful visual for the listener.
However, the album's weakest points unfortunately, seem to overtake the strongest points tenfold. As mentioned by this reviewer previously, the album reads like pages out of a distraught teenager's journal, still figuring out who they are and what they want to do. And while, in many cases, this proves a fountain of inspiration to deliver superb music for many, it falls short for O'Pry, simply coming off as childish, immature, and, like it's namesake, adolescent. Tracks like Iota of Love (who's use of large and unfamiliar language [Iota, Importunate, etc.] attempts to mask the incompetency of it's lyrical content), Toronto Trains (which makes no sense, quite frankly, and seems like a juvenile attempt at writing a mature love song), Kaleidoscope (an Ariana Grande reject, and for good reason, as the singer's latest self titled effort is leaps and bounds above the content of Adolescence), Maniac Passions (featuring the up-and-coming CaKe, who's reputation is unfortunately tarnished with such a gibberish song), and Youth (a song so one-leveled and cliche, you could copy paste it onto any other artist's repertoire and have it go unnoticed) fall extremely flat when compared to Cruel, Blues By The Bar, and the heart-wrenching and beautifully written closer, To The Ground We Go.
But quite possibly the worst contender of them all, and a track so painful to listen this reviewer only made it through once, is Delusional Dreamer. The disowned, distant second cousin (twice removed) of the 60s and 70s era of rebellion, big dreams, and a sense of freedom, Delusional Dreamer is a nearly 4 minute house and disco influenced track, boasting a grandiose and delightfully pleasing production, with god awful lyrics. With bouts of genius such as "Wanted to put me in college so I'd get all that knowledge," and rhyme schemes that read like a bad game of scrabble and a late night visit to rhymezone.com, the song reaches it's peak embarrassment with an excerpt from Shia Labeouf's 2015 viral video and motivational speech, Just Do It. Nearly a minute long sample of Labeouf screaming into this poor reviewer's ears, "Do it! Just do it! Don't let your dreams be dreams! Yesterday you said tomorrow, SO JUST DO IT!", almost drove them to insanity. What was, at least, a respectable effort that admittedly did not translate well with listeners, suddenly became a parody track, an embarrassment to music across the world, and a shameful tarnish on O'Pry's short and disappointing career.
The juvenile and immature lyrics of Adolescence are ultimately where it's biggest faults lay. Ranging from good, to bad, to just straight up shameful, the 12-track effort should've best been cut up into a 3 or 4 track EP, at least salvaging the few tracks that should have made the cut and distancing them from the tarnishing and sad grips of the rest of the album. For this reviewer, this will not be an album they will listen to again. Not even if they're paid to do so.
REVIEW #3 - 42
God, where do I start with this album? It's not that this is a bad album, but.... "Adolescence" clearly serves it's purpose, which is give Xylon a brand new image and give him a push into mainstream success after the X Factor fiasco with Maxence a year ago. But where does Xylon stand at the moment? I feel that he's in a limbo musically. Lyrically, I'm impressed as it shows that he, well, at least tried to come up with something to cover the real issue: this is a bad album. Maybe I'm just too picky when it comes to male artists as well, there aren't a lot that we can talk about besides Maxence and the bar is pretty high. The album has it's highs and lows, one of the lows definitely is his hit single "Cruel" with Lindsay Lohan, I'm pretty sure that the song would've been so much better without Lindsay's sloppy songwriting and one of the highs is without a doubt "Iota of Love" but that's saying something. I think that what I don't get is the placement of the songs, you start with a Maluma-ish type of production (Infatuation) and then you have next what it seems to be an R&B with an electric guitar type of beat that don't match up the first song. As I said, the songwriting is aight and showed that Xylon can somehow write decent songs but there's really nothing more so far, it seems this album won't age that well thanks to the production that sounds kinda dated at some points. I'm not even talking about "Toronto Trains", what a disaster. This album really made me think that "Chrysanthemum" is a good album, not even joking.
REVIEW #4 - 70
Having been around the music world for quite some time already, Xylon's debut album was on our upcoming list for quite some time. Our most vivid memory of the model turned singer would have to be his performance with Maxence at the X Factor to which I'm sure needs no more description. At that time I want to say he tried to release an EP... was that out at all finally? Idek anymore like 40% of records get cancelled nowadays. But enough about the past, Adolescence was a great addition to the slew of debut records released in the month of November, marking Xylon as a closing entry to the most promising new stars of 2017.
On track from lead single Cruel and Xylon's cheerful and pleasing personality on radio interviews, Adolescence is a tropical house-influenced pop album, hopping on the late train to the popular trend that swept pop music in recent years. The result is an energetic and youthful pop album that does just the trick, and hopes for nothing more. The core values of pop ladies and gents, it's not that hard! All 12 tracks come out as very nice bops, but some of these stand out from the rest - the appreciation anthem to young rebellious love "Youth" is one of these. Knew the instrumental sounded familiar from the beginning, but only at the drop I knew it wouldn't be a complete tropical pop album without a couple of generic but damn infectious Kygo beats! The Antonoff produced "Forever" is quite the sweet surprise as well, describing carefree, chilled romance that needs no hurry as Xylon sings "And we might not have forever, but let's just take our time". "Manic Passions" featuring the incredibly talented duo CaKe is a smash waiting to happen, fitting right on any dancefloor around the globe. And of course, the vocals on "Toronto Trains" deserves its mention as well, amazing effort!
Trinity: Youth | Forever | Manic Passions
REVIEW #5 - 70
I’m a big fan of this album for one main reason: it doesn’t try too hard to be something that it isn’t. Xylon delivered an album full of bops unapologetically, and it’s great. Adolescence isn’t an attempt at creating a Grammy-worthy critical masterpiece, and that’s perfectly fine. It’s actually very bold. Pop is so oversaturated nowadays with concept-heavy ideas that quite often miss the mark in their attempts to be groundbreaking. Xylon’s back to basics approach of delivering cute pop songs is refreshing.
That’s not to say the album isn’t clever or doesn’t have an overarching theme. It’s definitely true to the title, and to me it sounds like the soundtrack to the lives of young kids running around the city, falling in and out of love and figuring it all out. This is especially evident on the album’s new single and probably best track, Toronto Trains.
There isn’t a lot to unpack here because it’s not an ambitious project by any means, hence the score. But what it does do, it does so well. The contemporary and radio-friendly sound throughout the album is appropriate for it’s lyrical themes, and it sounds like it’s packed full of potential hits.
Will it be a contender for Album Of The Year? Unlikely. Will it be a memorable release years from now? Debatable, but it’s not important. It’s a great pop album, and that seems to have been the intention! So congratulations to Xylon on achieving what he set out to achieve, and putting out a great debut album.
REVIEW #6 - 81
With his first studio album, Xylon Bolt serves both a sexual and graceful feeling in 'Adolescence'. The visuals are very aesthetically pleasing and the entire album blends together very well. After releases like his early 'Fuck the Rules' EP and the infamous scrapped album 'BROJOB', Xylon's first proper release shows how much he's matured on a visual and lyrical level. Some of the strengths of the record are tracks like the opener, Infatuation, which combines a very rhythmic beat with lyrics that pull in the listener and make you craving more. Iota of Love also does so, as it elevates the tone of the lyrics after a few eh tracks, to this very mature and experienced songwriter. Un-debatably the best song off the album is his new smash hit Toronto Trains which individually received a perfect score. "Trains" shows off a more acoustic side of Xylon and how talented his music can be when abut more stripped back. Other songs like Blues by the Bar and Delusional Dreamer also show off his lyrical talents and how he can easily mix them with catchy beats by producers like Max Martin. However song tracks like Nightmare and To the Ground We Go were very similar to some of the highlights but lacked that extra shock with the lyrics. However they are unlike the two songs dragging down the album, which are the lead single Cruel ft Lindsay Lohan and Kaleidoscope. Both are very basic lyrically compared to the rest of the album, and also have much more generic beats. Overall Xylon had a very strong performance with this album and deserves lots of recognition in award shows and critic scoring.
Whether or not a rising star like him can compete against the likes of Lorde and Mariah Carey will truly be the determining factor in how well received the album is. But coming from us, Adolescence a well written and produced album.