Spectreview: Childish Gambino – 3.15.20

Childish Gambino’s surprise new album is a dense concoction of thrillingly risky experimental pop and half-measured ambition.

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“Why would we ever change?
Planets never see a day that isn’t towards the sun”

Donald Glover is an extraordinarily talented entertainer. Undebatable. He can sing, he can rap, he can act, he can write, and he has the capability to throw all of it into a solid statement. Charisma positively leaks out of his ears.

Artistically though, he’s kind of a poser. Maybe there’s a less harsh way to put it, but four full-lengths later and it’s a hard notion to shake. Listening to a Childish Gambino record inevitably involves watching his weird misplaced ambitions get in the way, whether it’s Camp’s tryhard rap or Because The Internet’s (admittedly gorgeous) multimedia mess. Even “Awaken, My Love!”, which saw Glover fusing G-funk and neo-soul into a gear-shifting R&B opus, still dragged with extraneous material. Whether it’s sonically, structurally or conceptually, the dude can’t edit, and maybe that’s one reason why critical opinions of his works have fluctuated so wildly.

But general music lovers, people who just like music without the baggage of compulsive critical appraisal – these are the lucky ones among us  – probably don’t weigh any of that. If you suspend your disbelief, if you stop thinking about why Glover makes the choices he makes on his records and just appreciate what’s playing, you might notice one of the tightest compromises between risk and craft over the last few years of pop. On a certain level, it’s why he’s become such a cult act; someone who takes the risks he does, especially in the popular sphere, is someone you want to see succeed.

3.15.20 takes a few unique risks of its own. For one, it’s new music from Childish Gambino, after a declaration of hiatus following the release of his runaway smash hit (the era-defining “This Is America”). Generally it’s solid advice not to take an artist at their word when they say they’re done for good; just look at LCD Soundsystem’s canny resuscitation in 2018, or A Tribe Called Quest’s redemptive masterwork in the same year, or countless other reunions over the last decade. So Gambino’s no different, but when the muse speaks the muse speaks. For another, its high-art aspirations are specifically novel to the project, even if there are parts that are just as undercooked as some of the other ideas he’s infused into his albums. Its title, its cover art, and most of the track titles (excepting the dual singles he released to fans last tour) are starkly blank and nondescript, which doesn’t bear well for its radio prospects but at least gives it some uniqueness. The decision to keep the extramusical semantics out of the picture clearly holds some deeper meaning, but that’s for people to decide on an individual level. My guess is that Glover just wanted people to sit down and listen in full, goddamnit.

As far as its identity, 3.15.20 sits almost exactly between the experimental hip-hop of Because The Internet and the psychedelic funk/soul fusion of “Awaken, My Love!”. What that means is that there’s nothing Glover’s doing here that’s new, besides the way the package is constructed, but it does lead to some especially delightful moments. Unfortunately most of those moments are tracks we’ve seen before: the smooth, dread-filled swelter of “42.26” (formerly “Feels Like Summer”), the Ariana Grande-featuring “Time,” and the dread-filled, quasi-industrial banger “Algorhythm” are all immediate standouts. That might be due to their familiarity or because they’re the only things here with footholds and tentative titles and established backgrounds. But new tracks, like the lazily warm groove of “47.48” or the satisfyingly funky bop of “19.10” also make their mark. Typical to Gambino records, part of the pleasure is seeing where the road goes, and where it goes is a certain breed of forward-looking pop and R&B that pulls primarily from Prince and Frank Ocean, with a hint of Soulquarian atmosphere, a dash of Sunday Service Choir, and some occasional unsettling codas.

Gambino records can be frustrating to critics because it’s too evident which creative wells he’s pulling from. It’s true that great poets steal, but it’s because they can hide it well, and when Gambino is introducing his record via a layered sound collage with vocodered vocals (“0.00”) or throwing out his vocal cords in the communal dance climax of “53.49,” the brain immediately goes to The 1975 and James Brown over any inspired decision of Glover’s. Same goes for the Blue Ivy moment from Beyoncé’s “Blue” at the end of “47.48”, or the “Black Skinhead” panting on “32.22”. No mistake, it’s 2020 and there are no new ideas, but it’s the notion that Glover is presenting these as new ideas that creates some dissonance. While originality has never been his strong suit though, he’s at least consistently borrows some pretty great ideas, and the fact that he’s at it again here, in a sense, makes that behavior its own artistic calling card. It might be a hodgepodge of pilfered sounds, but the overall feeling of the record definitely belongs to Childish Gambino, who remains as chameleonic as he’s always been.

His own additions, meanwhile, continue to be as scattershot, if well-intentioned, as we come to expect. People malign the “experimental” genre tag because it doesn’t guarantee quality control, and the experimental touches that Glover adds to this record augment its unpredictability but are generally pointless, even needlessly off-putting. The problem is that a lot of them feel like half-measures that ultimately distract from the main experience, which is overall a fairly standard experimental pop record by 2020 standards. It’s a little different than Because The Internet, which felt like its own beast because of all the weird glitchy touches; almost every 3.15.20 track is demarcated with a creepy collage of noises that are meant to symbolize..something? A sense that things are wrong in the world? Perhaps, but despite what they do to the mood they’re not seamlessly integrated, and they’re certainly not groundbreaking.

Generously, we could say they simply instill a feeling of unease that unifies the record’s styles, and that taking such a risk has always been part of the charm of a Gambino album. And to his credit, he’s certainly gotten better at keeping the indulgence to a low level. But it’s still indulgent, and more often than not in a bad way. We don’t need a minute-long coda of Glover imitating the sexual response cycle, even if listening to him pretend to cum signifies some greater statement about instant gratification and its destructive nature. The triangle waveforms that close and open the record are interesting – Glover loves the idea of an cyclical record – but are even more incidental than Because The Internet’s punny “bookends”. A lot else, like the backwards singing and infinitesimal delay closing “35.31” and the bitcrushed baby cries on “32.22,” pass through the ears inspiring intrigue but not much else. I always hesitate to use the “p” word when talking about art in any capacity, but it’s also the duty of an artist to fight off claims of being pretentious, and Gambino rides that line hard this time around.

None of this matters ultimately, because Glover deals in transience, not permanence. It’s not worth it to think about how he’s aping Prince in “12.38” or Frank Ocean’s Blonde in “24.19” because both songs are completely enjoyable, breezy experiences from top to bottom. As far as substance goes the meat of the album is sonically rock solid, bouncing between trendy R&B, aggressive rap, and vibe-heavy neo-soul at will. Glover’s got a great voice and he’s a competent self-harmonizer. His production choices are excellent, like the vocal processing on “Algorhythm” that cuts through the mix. He also doesn’t waste instrumental accompaniment: the harp playing on “24.19” makes the track, as does the funky organ and jazz flute on “47.48”. Essentially what these last two records have shown is how Glover’s got an understated set of musical chops that might be overshadowed by more flagrant parts of the Childish Gambino project but still make for great sounding records.

If the stylistic choices feel schizophrenic here, that goes ditto for the lyrical content. 3.15.20 has to include some level of cultural commentary (it can’t not, after “This Is America”) but Glover finds room for some lighter material, like the standard romantic ode of “24.19” and the ebullient fountain of gratitude in “53.49” that caps the album. Otherwise it’s a dark record, one that beats with the pulse of a nation soaked in existential anxiety. There’s no concrete narrative, and theres even less of a consistent message, but perhaps that’s the point. America’s a little manic-depressive at the moment, and keeping the train of thought derailed might just be another way of examining how we operate on a macro level. That’s about as deep as it goes unfortunately. Once again, Gambino can’t shake his most dogged criticism; in his quest to cover all the bases, he spreads himself too thin to approach a satisfying level of depth. Artistic polyglots tend to be jacks-of-all-trades, and 3.15.20’s chaotic environment is better suited than ever to a kitchen-sink approach, but it would be foolish to go into this record expecting a focused thesis statement.

Instead, if what you’re looking for is a cinematic, genre-bending rollercoaster with a little more depth than your average pop album, this new record has got what you’re looking for. Everything one might appreciate about Childish Gambino is present here, along with a good deal of his faults, but 3.15.20 is still worth experiencing for how of-the-moment it feels. While it’s still Glover trying as hard as he can to be a “serious artist”, he comes closer than ever to earning that lofty title, even if it still falls a little short.

Recommended for virtual summers.