REVIEW: Blue Madonna

★★★½

Three years after Dopamine, BØRNS has finally arrived with his sophomore effort, Blue Madonna. The album is quintessentially BØRNS, channelling 80s pop and delivering danceable tunes that feel timeless rather than old--but perhaps that much was evident from the title alone.

The album opens with the lush and glamorous "God Save Our Young Blood," which features support from none other than Lana Del Rey. She appears on the album's title track, as well, and it is quite fitting that the queen of brooding over retro beats is Blue Madonna's guest of honour.

"Faded Heart" and "Sweet Dreams" were great releases as singles and uphold the groovy sonic cohesion of the album. "We Don't Care" and "Second Night of Summer" are further proof that the album's addicting rhythms are also worth contemplating lyrically: the combination of these two factors is, in my opinion, one of the keys to making great music.

But one of the album's greatest instances is the "Tension" interlude. The track acts as a transition, both in the literal sense of the album, as well as the figurative sense of the singer's perspective. Our album's protagonist is beginning to realize that the emotions built up between himself and his prospective lover were actually all just one-sided--it is one of those awful realizations that dizzies us and causes us to re-evaluate everything we had been so convinced was mutual. It was a moment on the album that rang especially true.

The album heavily references the likes of Madonna (big surprise!) and Prince, who had actually named BØRNS one of his favourite new artists following the success of "Electric Love" in one of his final interviews--so this homage is very fitting.

As a whole, the album recalls feelings that are both otherworldly and utterly human, a sentiment that seems contradictory, but in fact makes perfect sense: true, raw emotion is almost always both of these things. It is one of those albums that rewards its listeners upon several listenings, and while it doesn't quite live up to Dopamine's sequence of consistently great bangers, BØRNS still gives us a second output that nearly matches the caliber of his first.