7.5/10
Favorite Track: "Feeling Lonely" Least Favorite Track: "tkm"
Norwegian indie rock band Boy Pablo’s 2017 EP Roy Pablo was an extremely flawed project in my opinion. Not only were the ideas and concepts off the project very stale, old, and re-rinsed but the bands complete sound could very easily and quite obviously be pinned down to one clear, very prominent, influence; and that’s Mac DeMarco. This culminated to probably a 3 or a 4 for me at best. However, their were flashes off the EP that showed some clear potential for the future of boy pablo. Tracks like “Dance, Baby!” showed that at least the band could write a decent hook (even if it sounds exactly Mac DeMarco). Around a year later came another EP from boy pablo in Soy Pablo. Thankfully, Soy Pablo is a pretty big improvement for the band. In the months they had to hone in on their sound and make some drastically needed changes they did evolve their content a lot and add a lot more flavor to their catalog. The stale and overused ideas fade away a little bit on Soy Pablo and the band seems to fit into their shoes a bit more than they previously did. This has to do with a lot catchier hooks, stronger and more engaging instrumentals, and just better written material. They also sound less like Mac DeMarco than ever and he now seems like more of an Influence rather than a driving force in their sound (thank god). On top of all that this project drags on far less than their last one tended to, which was one of my main problems Roy Pablo. In essence, it’s a pretty big improvement on almost all fronts for boy pablo, and I’m happy to say for the most part I really enjoyed Soy Pablo. From the first track, the album is an improvement. “Feeling Lonely” is instrumentally amazing. From the very first second of the track, the driving guitar riff is just so bright and vivid and enjoyable. There isn’t a moment from this track that isn’t engaging and enjoyable. After that “wtf” is a little snippet song that only hits a length of one minute and twelve seconds. Despite this, it’s catchy drum beat that features both some fun open hi-hat work on the end of each bar, and some very cleverly placed ghost notes makes the track pop quite a bit. I also love the word play and cleverness of the title. The short track completely being about not understanding why someone is making a certain face. Cleverly the track is titled “wtf” meaning “why the face” instead of “what the fuck” (at least that’s my guess). Next, we get “Sick Feeling”. My love for this track does come with some frustration however. This track is truly made by the hook which is the explosive chorus. The build up is absolutely amazing but when we finally get this explosion into the chorus I feel like it lacks just a little. Pablo Muñoz goes into this higher pitch that works very nicely with his voice when he howls “WHAT A SICK SICK FEELING”. However, once his voice explodes into this rocking hook, his voice seems to fall back down right after this phrase instead of run with the momentum and keep building higher to reach an even better climax in the chorus. I truly just feel as if the chorus (while still enjoyable) could of been so much better if his voice would of peaked and climaxed a little bit higher in the middle of this hook, if that makes sense. Despite this the track is still very enjoyable. The first three tracks on this album do kind of provide an early peak unfortunately, not to say there isn’t other enjoyable content on this album, but the first three tracks are definitely the strongest. Fourth comes, “t-shirt” I have mixed feelings about this track but it definitely is better than anything off Roy Pablo. The chorus is kind of cute and sweet “but remember, that I love you, and you know I always will”. I like the dreamy synths that come after that. The track sounds somewhere between a pleasant acid trip and and beautiful summer day on the beach. Unfortunately both “Limitado” and “tkm” both fall back into Roy Pablo’s trend of dragging on immensely. Both tracks feature these very long, and overly extended outros that pad the songs out way too much and really take away any appeal they had in the first place. The track before “tkm”, however doesn’t fall into the same trap. “Losing you” features a fun and groovy intro with some triplet fills that flow into the rest of the instrumentals quite nicely. A catchy chorus and some bitter-sweet lyrics about losing someone you love, pad the rest of the track out effectively. At only three minutes and seven seconds long, this track doesn’t overstay it’s welcome
(like tkm and Limitado do) and is a mostly enjoyable tune. Soy Pablo, is for the most part short, sweet, and catchy. A couple duds in the track list do make the second half of the record a kind of dreary listen but compared to their last project, the dreariness is nothing. If Soy Pablo did anything for me it was make me excited for future boy pablo projects because if they can make the kind of improvement on their next record like they did on this one, we could truly be in for something special.