Don't Get Too Close - Skrillex
Skrillex take a stap at an electronic sad-pop album with masterful technical efforts but to dissapointing results
Skrillex’s return to the forefront of the electronic music scene has been anything but silent. Whether it has been his slew of releases of new singles, his culture-gripping collaborations with artists such as Four Tet and Fred again.., or his pop-up shows (the latest being a show in MSG that sold out in mere minutes of being on-sale) he has made sure his presence is felt. Now, finally, Skrillex has released his first complete solo bodies of work since 2014, and does so with a bang – performing a double album drop. Despite all of the noise and attention however, the 2nd of the aforementioned albums, Don’t Get Too Close, feels more like a sizzle than a bang.
On Don’t Get Too Close, Skrillex’s mastery of technical mixing and music creation is on full display; but his songwriting is sorely lacking. The resulting work is an album that is exceptionally mixed and sounds fantastic, but lacks any real appeal beyond those surface-level attributes. Whether it’s the excessive use of features (many of whom are more detrimental than anything) or the fact that much of the production sounds quite uninspired and derivative of standard billboard electro-pop hits, this album just really doesn’t feel like it has anything new to offer – which is exceptionally disappointing from such a prolific and culture-shaping artist such as Skrillex. Overall, despite its general groove and comforting ambience, this album just cannot find any new space to carve out for itself that makes it artistic or memorable.
On the topic of the features list, only a very small subset are truly worth their inclusion. PinkPantheress, Bibi Bourelly, Swae Lee, and Kid Cudi are standouts that bring their signature styles to their respective tracks and it works perfectly. The sweet, cutesy, and melodic ambiences that they deliver fit perfectly into the soundscape which this album consists of and genuinely enriches it. For example, the album’s title track includes a uniquely pleasant instrumental backdrop, consisting of long guitar whines overtop a comforting hang line, which when mixed in with Bourelly’s Backyardigans-esque adorability and authenticity makes for a track that feels charming and healing. Another fun and notable feature moment worth a mention is hearing Justin Bieber and Don Toliver tossing lines back-and-forth on “Don’t Go” which makes me hope to hear more collaborations from these 2 in the future.
On the other side though, the remaining features feel like white noise at their best, such as Bladee on “Real Spring”, or annoyingly in-the-way at worst. On “Bad For Me”, Corbin appears to be trying to clone the style of Juice WRLD to horrendously annoying effect which really takes away from the track.
The album is very transparent about what it’s trying to say – Skrillex through these tracks is communicating feelings of loneliness, solidarity, and a fear of allowing others to get too close, lest that safe isolation come to a distarous end. It’s a feeling all to familiar to just about everybody and for that reason makes this album feel so universally relatable. Despite the abysmal effectiveness of delivering these feelings through features and their vocal additions, Skrillex works it in through his technical work. The particular instruments chosen, from deep, bouncing 808s to a gentle harp which can be heard throughout “Ceremony”, highlight space. The gap between these elements in terms of both physical spacing and differences in timbre creates lots of pockets of empty space, placing the listener precisely within them to achieve the desired effect of making you feel comfortably isolated.
Don’t Get Too Close is an enjoyable enough album that warrants its existence if only for Skrillex to have an opportunity to try his hand at creating music not just for fans of his previous work, but also to present his return to the mainstream audience at large. Mostly, it results in a surface-level album that contains comfortably pleasant songs but does not deliver much more value than that. The technical prowess Skrillex delivers is impressive, but beyond that listeners are left with much to be desired from this unfortunately disappointing addition to Skrillex’s discography.