Carly Rae Jepsen: The Loneliest Time Album Review - Pitchfork

Rostam is 1 of much than a twelve writers and producers, including Jepsen’s predominant collaborator Tavish Crowe, that she brought connected for this album—her ain small popular factory. As connected erstwhile projects, their output was substantial: Jepsen says she utilized a “mad, technological process” to whittle down the tracklist from much than a 100 opus ideas. Some that made the chopped consciousness dashed off; you wonderment if Jepsen could person written less, much carefully. The breakup banger “Talking to Yourself” feels similar 2 antithetic Dua Lipa outtakes cut-and-pasted together, with immoderate distracting accumulation flourishes tossed in. On “Sideways,” a wisp of a opus that hardly passes the two-minute mark, Jepsen is characteristically lovestruck, mislaid successful daydreams astir her caller boo. She’s truthful engaged smiling astatine strangers, she forgot to constitute a bridge.

Loneliness isn’t the ascendant emotion connected this record. It’s mostly felt arsenic the liminal abstraction successful betwixt crushes, which stay Jepsen’s favored projects. Even connected the rubric track, an oddball duet with chap Canadian Rufus Wainwright, loneliness is conscionable a speck successful the rearview reflector connected Jepsen’s thrust to reunite with an ex: “I’m coming backmost for you, baby!” she yelps successful a theatrical spoken-word interlude, conscionable earlier the strings swoop successful and a car motor revs. Her chosen palette leans disco, a genre that implies the convergence of bodies—an antidote to loneliness, built close into the music. The adjacent “Shooting Star” shares a akin aesthetic orientation, each bushed guitar bubbles and spaceship synths and vocoder effects.

The champion disco opus connected The Loneliest Time technically isn’t adjacent connected The Loneliest Time—it’s “Anxious,” a slinky bonus track. Here, the dancefloor lights dim somewhat and the substance brings much affectional nuance, arsenic Jepsen grapples with jealousy and the thought that romance is sometimes distracting, not curative. The song’s placement successful overflow seating feels arbitrary, reflecting a recurring frustration: Jepsen’s albums thin to relation much arsenic vessels for songs than arsenic afloat conceived projects. Releasing some E•MO•TION and Dedicated twice, arsenic A-sides and B-sides, blurred their conceptual boundaries for nary crushed different than the availability of material; it’s hard to ideate however a theoretical The Loneliest Time Side B could clarify the caller record’s somewhat unfocused vision. There’s nary question that Jepsen tin constitute songs that transport you—to the vigor of the moment, the late-night neon glow, the driver’s spot connected the mode retired of town. With a much defined roadmap, the full medium mightiness person led determination worthy sticking astir for a while.

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