Memories...Do Not Open is the aptly named debut album by the dynamic EDM duo The Chainsmokers. This album was certainly hyped a LOT... they had 5 top 20 hits in the last year, with Closer, Roses, Don't Let Me Down, Something Just Like This, and Paris, two of which are on this album. I have previously reviewed their EP Collage, which I highly disliked, with the lowest score on my blog of 28/100. Thankfully, this album surpassed my expectations, if just a little bit. The first thing to note about this album, which is certainly extremely strange, is that every single track is co-produced by DJ Swivel. This is rather weird for a supposed EDM group... Emily Warren, a singer/songwriter I rather like (especially with her song Capsize last year) also participates in a lot of the tracks on this album, lending uncredited features, writing credits, and two credited features. I like to call her the third Chainsmoker, personally.
"The One" illustrates this quite well, with uncredited backup vocals by Emily Warren herself. The Chainsmokers use nostalgia-inducing lyrics and surprisingly nice sounding vocals. The drop takes way too long and when it does come it sounds pointless, with weird vocal samples and it just sounds dated.
"Break Up Every Night" is just so weird... it's completely unlike the Chainsmokers usual style. It sounds like a boy band song and it's so utterly cheesy but for some reason I find myself liking it. It's certainly an earworm. The lyrics are horribly bad at some points ("She wants to break up every night/then tries to f*ck me back to life") but oddly good and charismatic at other times: "She's got seven different personalities, every one's a tragedy" and "Been to France one time, now you're Parisian". The production isn't outstanding and I really can't say why I like this song but it's certainly an album highlight.
"Bloodstream", on the other hand, has a really nice name but the lyrics are complete trash ("The things that I said, they were so overrated). The drop sounds exactly like the Roses drop, and uncredited backup vocals are provided by Pheobe Ryan, who I would much rather actually sing part of the song. This is just filler at best.
"Don't Say", this time officially featuring the Third Chainsmoker, has these really dumb, dissonant synths in the instrumental that immediately turn me off of the song. The pre-chorus is really weird and doesn't fit at all with the rather decent drop, which is powerful, almost to the point of overwhelming. It's certainly a case of weird dynamics. It also loses that power for the third drop, just sounding empty at the high ranges. There's a rather weird spoken word outro that shows a bit of the song creation process, but just sounds tacky.
"Something Just Like This", the second single from the album, is a great case of weird and horrible lyrics. They try to take the theme of mythology and superheroes, but mess it up with lines like "Achilles and his gold"; who remembers Achilles for his gold armor? How random. Sung by Chris Martin (well, it's officially credited as Coldplay, but I doubt that the band had much to do with this production). The weird and almost juvenile "do do do" in between a lot of the lines are off-putting and the drop is literally what you would get if you combined Roses with Closer.
"My Type", the second official Third Chainsmoker feature, is a bit better. It's about a dysfunctional relationship, and Emily's voice is surprisingly easy to read for emotion. It does tend to drag on and the drop is again too loud (and sounds badly mixed in general), but as far as filler goes, this isn't too bad.
"It Won't Kill Ya" takes a turn. Featuring the best vocals on the album, French singer Louanne provides some really quality melodies. From the start of the song you can tell that it's going to be different, with a really unique pre-chorus compared to normal Chainsmokers songs. Instead of going right into the drop like most, there's a short period of anticipation after the buildup, before dropping low into this dark and completely unexpected drop. The Chainsmokers haven't recorded a song like this in so long, and it's great; those loud, dreary synths in the drop are offset perfectly by a simple saying "mon amour", which just sounds like, so extremely good. A little something about the song sounds a little bit off, but I'm not quite sure what it is, but it keeps me from giving this song a perfect score.
"Paris". Yeah, you've probably heard this song a lot on top 40 radio by now. "The One" is quite similar to it, as in it doesn't quite have any drops save for a long one at the end. The lyrics are apparently symbolic about one of the Chainsmokers' friends suffering from addiction, but they're so vapid that it's genuinely hard to tell, and the video for this song doesn't help either. It's better than closer but not by far. AGAIN, uncredited Emily Warren vocals. See what I mean?
If you look up the definition of filler, "Honest" would probably come up. A really #edgy fake-deep intro about the "hypocrisy of the human heart" starts such a vanilla song. The background instrumentals are weird and, yet again, there's only one real drop/chorus that takes place at the end of the song. though I'm not even sure that it can count as a drop with how safe it is.
Inexplicably, the next song feature R&B/pop singer Jhene Aiko. Her voice is pretty nice, as always, though I do prefer Louanne's voice from a few songs back. The drop itself is a bit grating and not particularaly interesting or dancy... I'd think that this would be a more downtempo song considering Jhene Aiko's usual brand, but it appears that The Chainsmokers considered it more fitting to ignore her usual style.
The last two songs bring in some weird sounds, with a guitar making up a lot of the instrumental for "Young". The lyrics are almost exactly like Closer, just nostalgia inducing tropes. The production is pretty okay, though not particularly interesting, especially during the drop, where, of course, it's supposed to to be the best. There's also a surprising vocoder, which sounds quite good. Perhaps if they went down this more experimental track, I'd appreciate them more.
"Last Day Alive" is such a weird song. It's so highly autotuned and it's featuring country-pop group Florida Georgia Line, but sadly, there is no country in it. I was very interested in what a Chainsmokers country EDM song would sound like, but instead, we get this thing. It does sound quite theatric, like it could be in a Dreamworks movie with a few lyrics changes. It has quite the big sound but the lyrics are so lame and it's so repetitive that I can't find myself enjoying it.
So, overall, I didn't hate this album as much as I thought. Though there is only one song that I genuinely, unashamedly like, it could certainly be worse. Sure, it's lazy, and cliche, and basically the same song about ten times, I'm not TOO dissapointed in it, as my hopes weren't high in the first place. The Chainsmokers have certainly changed a lot, and haven't really pioneered anything new for so long, and that's just a shame, to be honest.
Final Verdict:
35/100
Favorite Songs: It Won't Kill Ya, Break Up Every Night
Least Favorite Songs: Something Just Like This, The One, Bloodstream
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