Childish Gambino - Bando Stone And The New World (Album Review)
Tuesday, 23 July 2024
Written by Tom Morgan
Donald Glover’s creative output epitomises ‘metamodern’. His work bulldozes irony in search of complex, messy layers of emotional sincerity. As Childish Gambino, he crafts dense, ambitious albums, rife with self-awareness, juxtaposed genres and cautiously optimistic explorations of human identity.
His fifth full-length ‘Bando Stone and The New World’ is his self-proclaimed final album under the moniker. It’s a sprawling, 17-track creation — an explosion of colourful ideas that starts off bafflingly unfocused but becomes gradually more lucid and endearing.
The opening track H3@RT$ W3RE M3@NT T0 F7¥ channels the monolithic synth aggression of ‘Yeezus’-era Kanye West, but the ensuing Lithonia is a piano-rock epic that sets the album’s maximalist, earnest tone.
Following this one-two are wild left-turns to bouncy trap with Talk My Shit, acoustic prettiness on Steps Beach and saccharine pop during Real Love.
This sincere, joyful sunniness is initially puzzling. Glover’s upbeat tone often comes across as both preposterous and disarmingly sincere, offering a metamodern fusion of modernism’s earnest sincerity and post-modernism’s arch irony.
For example, Cruisin and Running Around use grand strings and exaggerated pop-rock cheese with total, committed honesty. Instead of deconstructing or subverting these familiar musical tropes, Glover wholly believes in their emotional power and utilises them to glorious, emotionally resonant effect.
This emotional clarity is what makes ‘Bando Stone and The New World’ such a fascinatingly contemporary collection. Along with similarly human and hopeful 2024 releases by Charli XCX and Beyoncé, Childish Gambino’s swansong is an intriguing example of nascent tonal and aesthetic developments in popular music.
Childish Gambino Upcoming Tour Dates are as follows:
Tue November 26 2024 - MANCHESTER AO Arena
Thu November 28 2024 - GLASGOW OVO Hydro
Sat November 30 2024 - LONDON O2 Arena
Sun December 01 2024 - LONDON O2 Arena
Tue December 03 2024 - BIRMINGHAM Utilita Arena Birmingham
Thu December 05 2024 - DUBLIN 3Arena
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