Last Day of Summer
,
Summer Walker
's debut mixtape, charmed with its immediacy, spontaneity, and unguarded approach to songwriting. The follow-up, classified as a true album, is more thought-through and sounds more honed -- all ballads and slow jams, driven production-wise by
London on Da Track
instead of the still-on-board
Arsenio Archer
-- but there's no confusing it with the work of anyone but the same artist who broke through with "Girls Need Love."
Walker
remains more than adept enough as a lyricist and vocalist to distinguish herself over bleary trap-styled productions -- not a minor feat in 2019. She does it to best effect on "Me," seductive and threatening at once, just above a whisper: "I would never shoot you, baby/Maybe just wave it around, all in your face." This also features another one of
's bare self-recordings, with her anguished voice accompanied only by a guitar with strings struck just enough to serve as a kind of punctuation. Like earlier reputation-making cuts "Session 32," "Just Like Me," and "Riot," "Fun Girl" contains some of her frankest lyrics and rawest emotion: "Love who I want and fuck who I choose to/Don't take no shit and won't be used." The only negative development here is the featured appearances. Smartly chosen but too common, they tend to get in the way. ~ Andy Kellman