Mac Miller’s estate released his second posthumous album, “Balloonerism,” on Friday, Jan. 17 — a beautiful production that displays his creativity and desire to break through musical norms, but ultimately fails to achieve these goals through repetitive and often drab musicality. The album was recorded and produced during a two-week session in 2014 between the release of his albums “Watching Movies With the Sound Off” and “Faces.” Although many of the songs featured on “Balloonerism” were previously leaked online, “Balloonerism” is their consolidated, official release.
Miller, like his previous albums “Swimming” and “The Divine Feminine,” uses both experimental and poetic lyricism in “Balloonerism” to emphasize his diverse, changing feelings about various points in his life. He speaks about overworking himself as an artist, the loss of childhood innocence and substance use to an upbeat, hip-hop tune, making his music digestible for a diverse audience with differing musical tastes.
However, Miller’s attempts fall short with his use of vague, repetitive messaging, hindering his connection with the listener and making the album feel more apathetic than sympathetic. It is difficult for the listener to truly visualize Miller’s highs and lows, the antithesis of his original intentions.
In each song, Miller isn’t afraid to get personal, in the sense that the topics that he sings and raps about are often ignored or stigmatized in pop culture and society. Miller utilizes psychedelic instrumentals, tambourine and piano, as well as spoken verse to tell these emotional stories, coupling slow beats alongside sorrowful and upbeat stories. A unique feature of his production is his use of mixing different voices, distorting sound and sound effects, such as soft hums and constant screams, in the background to provide emotional clarity and depth. In “Excelsior,” a song where Miller reminisces upon childhood innocence and the emptiness of losing that feeling, he places the fading voices of children playing as the introduction to the song — an auditory metaphor of his emotions.
While Miller surely lacks in lyricism, he makes up for it in exemplary song-crafting, which seems to amplify the messages of pain, love and tragedy he fails to get across verbally through prose or rap. Each song has a clear progression from start to end with the instrumentals displaying tone, with slow and surreal tones to emphasize his pain. However, for listeners who may be attracted to fast-paced music or continuous verse, “Balloonerism” may not provide the tunes they seek, catering to only a smaller, slow-tune-preferring audience.
A musical tool Miller utilizes among multiple songs in “Balloonerism” is rapping in a third-person point of view on stories of his acquaintances and friends, and contrasting them in first-person with his own. The song “Funny Papers” displays Miller’s ability to tell stories as he describes the death of a man and the birth of another, while bridging these stories to his own day-to-day life, representing how the world goes on. Miller continues to expand on his inner thoughts and feelings in different songs through dramatic lyricism, present in his commentary on the realities of death. In “Shangri-La,” he sings, “If I die young, promise to smile at my funeral,” and in “Manakins,” he raps, “’Cause I see the light at the end of the tunnel (Yeah) / It feels like I’m dyin’, dyin’ (Yeah), dyin’ / I’m dead.” However, despite this unique lyricism and various point-of-views, Miller ultimately falls short of connecting with the listener because of his repetitive lyricism.
Miller’s lackluster prose and lyricism are compounded by a lack of variety in beat and tune throughout the album. While Miller attempts to mix a wide variety of genres that fit the emotional appeal of the messages in each segment of a song, he continues to fall back on beats that make each song sound similar to the rest. For example, “5 Dollar Pony Ride” and “Shangri-La” both use the same slow, monotone beat, which is still present five tracks later in “Rick’s Piano.” One of few collaborations on the album, “DJ’s Chord Organ” with singer SZA, is a representation of Miller’s attempt to captivate with psychedelic intros and incessant humming in outros, yet the almost empty body of each song completely exonerates listener interest.
Ultimately, Miller is unapologetically himself in this record, and despite its shortcomings, “Balloonerism” is incredibly cohesive. With the clear progression from start to finish, each song is a continuation of the previous. This record doesn’t try to be anything more than it is and delivers on the promise of exploring the hardships of Miller’s life, using slow lyrics and calming instruments to depict these experiences. Although “Balloonerism” may not resonate with listeners unfamiliar with Miller and his previous works, for long-time fans of Miller, “Balloonerism” is a project befitting his discography. “Balloonerism” is sufficient as an album, but for casual listeners? It might be time to blow up somebody else’s balloon.
Rating 3/5
