Album Review: Autre Ne Veut Delivers Nouveau R&B Sensibilities With Sophomore Album ‘Anxiety’

By: Alex Lee –

Modern R&B has outgrew its archaic formula with a surprisingly fertile foundation, one wavering between ‘90s sensuality and the avant tropes of Animal Collective. With its visceral appeal to indie turfs, a much more experimental mold has veered into the genre. It is often lascivious, taking familiar cues from the extremes of R&B with newly found platitudes of atmospheric sounds beckoned by slurry, almost hedonistic lyrical context.

Brooklyn-based Arthur Ashin, who performs under the French moniker Autre Ne Veut, is among the handful of poster boys successful in embracing the newly-found palettes of today’s R&B. His sophomore effort Anxiety seeks to draw out a much more emotional and tactile sensation than the last, branding his ambient R&B that manifests a nuance of accessible pop choruses, highly stylized productions and remarkably confident songcraft. Much of the album is an ambiguous bravado of R&B’s dizziest daydreams, seemingly curated by a sense of modernist, forward-thinking approach that makes Anxiety a record of poignant and devastating art, one that seeks to turn down traditions.

Aside from its nouveau spectrums of avant-R&B, the alabaster sound of Anxiety is penchant on delivering confessional and personal content. Interviews see Ashin telling his personal struggles with anxiety, and, despite the record’s seemingly apt title, the record grapples with a range of aggressive and sensitive lyrical tones. Anxiety is at its core charged with sensual undertones, yet its neurotic perception of various emotions keeps in line the titular concept of the record; it’s the sort of anxiety that fears the unknown that permeates the album. “It’s something I can’t explain / It’s just a feeling / More like a warning” croons Ashin in “Warning”. His voice quavers in its bleak vulnerability, high and thin with specs of anger and frustration. It’s boyish, yet the unnerving falsetto delivers a chilling indicative of the bipolar tone set in Anxiety.

While “Gonna Die” and “World War” are arguably the emotive centerpieces of Anxiety, tracks like “Ego Free Sex Free” and opener “Play By Play” offer Ashin’s rom-com-esque infatuations. The motif of anxiety is hardly transparent in those songs, yet it’s his playful delivery of the morbid yearnings of love that produces a sickly, almost satirical atmosphere buoyed by the touch of modesty in his lyrics. It’s in this sense that Anxiety’s most visceral and sexual moments help architect the album’s artistic dexterity. There is obviously a personal, almost therapeutic intent that Ashin carries throughout the record, yet Anxiety’s thematic dissonance often proves to subdue its sincerity. Still, beneath the vacuum of ethereal synths and euphoric productions, Ashin’s precocious vocals and delivery make up for the album’s barebones moments.

Anxiety never ponders on anything fictitious or superficial. Rather, it feels more like a stripped down revelation of the artist, pinpointing at different stages of Ashin’s life. Whether it is the anxieties of death, sex, or in relationships, the record manages to graze past the different angles of everyday anxieties with an album that barely clocks in at 40 minutes. It’s deeply personal, yet the content is wonderfully ambitious.

Essential tracks: “Counting,” “Ego Free Sex Free,” and “Play by Play.”