Album Review: Giveon, ‘Give Or Take’

Giveon’s voice, for better or for worse, is a conversation starter. Twitter commentators will liken his singing to someone “being drowned in a toilet,” yet, at the same time, his voice will lift songs like “Heartbreak Anniversary” to the upper most regions of the music charts. The most common entry point to the world of Giveon is his turn as hook boy on Drake’s “Chicago Freestyle.” His embattled, slightly hoarse tone, rugged baritone, and melancholic riffs launched him from a virtual nobody to one of the most in-demand male R&B stars of the current era. Two EPs (Take Time and When It’s All Said And Done), a handful of Grammy nominations, and one Hot 100 #1 hit (“Peaches”) later, Giveon has finally unleashed his proper debut album.

Give Or Take attempts to add nuance to the “toxic lover” trope Giveon embodied on his previous projects, but lethargic pacing and drowsy melodies undermine those efforts. Somehow, the seemingly endless carousel of producers manage to create an overarching soundscape that lacks any kind of texture. Album opener “Let Me Go” teases a record that will lean into the storied strain of melodramatic male R&B that so many listeners have been longing for. Set against cinematic piano, Giveon’s mother gushes “I'm so proud of you, I'm sick right now.” Without fail, the piano gives way to moody trap drums as Giveon prepares the soundtrack for an album that explores his identity as a single man after getting confirmation that his former relationship has reached a dead end. “Scarred” is a strikingly Drake-esque tune that excels by way of its gentle guitar strums and the slight flip into falsetto that occurs at the end of each phrase in the hook. Like his two-time collaborator, Giveon acknowledges that his own demons render him incapable of treating his girl how he knows she should be treated, but he isn’t actually concerned with destroying those demons. This is where Give Or Take reaches a roadblock; there’s no tension to ground the album. Each lyric is more predictable than the last. He dedicates two consecutive tracks to a story about him falling in love with a fan before admitting his chronic need to be with somebody on “Get To You.” “Single but it's gettin' old quick / I'm on the road each night, need someone to hold me,” he croons.

For eight tracks, Give Or Take lumbers its way through midtempo after midtempo. The pacing of this record is so taxing that unless you’re on a mission to finish the whole thing, you just might cut it off. “For Tonight,” one of the album’s radio singles, begins the uptick in tempo with its torch-song balladry and anthemic hook. “Lost Me,” a guitar-centric number that evokes Khalid’s Free Spirit era, is the first time that Giveon sounds like he’s having fun. Everything up to this point is far too serious for ultimately inconsequential subject matter; he’s actually employing a bit of irony here. The free-wheeling whimsy of the track’s instrumentation and Giveon’s vocal performance mirror his lyrics about getting lost in his own freedom and choices, but that energy would have helped inject some life into the first half of the album. One other pre-release singles appear in the back half: “Lie Again,” which exposes the goat-like tendencies of his vibrato. There’s also “Another Heartbreak,” a moment that underscores the limits of the piano ballad as an emotional centerpiece when it is placed in the context of countless drab ballads and midtempos. When Giveon elects to lean into the drama like on the cinematic “Unholy Matrimony” and the heartfelt “At Least We Tried,” the album finds its pocket — the very one that he inexplicably avoids on the front half of the album despite spending considerable time there on his EPs.

Give Or Take has some stellar moments, but they’re buried in an album that takes itself entirely too seriously for good.

Key Tracks: “Dec 11” | “Scarred” | “Lost Me” | “At Least We Tried” | “Unholy Matrimony”

Score: 68