SMILE! :D is Porter Robinson’s most unflinching work yet

At the beginning of his career, Robinson played rave-y, aggressive EDM while having anxiety attacks on stage, unconvinced by the music he was making. He channelled that discontent into fantastical escapism on his debut Worlds, crafting a new emotional, tender production style that forever changed the electronic music zeitgeist. His following album Nurture recounted the difficulty of seven years of post-Worlds writer’s block and depression, largely through the lens of optimistic hindsight.

After spending nearly a decade either writing sentimental songs or facing brutal spates of burnout, Robinson thought he was ready to abandon it all. He set out to make a third album that was “no sincerity, all fun”. Instead, SMILE is about sixty percent fun and one hundred percent sincere. It’s soul-baring, occasionally to the point of uncomfortability; it’s crushing, beautiful, and confrontational. It’s simultaneously one of the most joyful and depressing albums I’ve ever heard.

But elements of Robinson’s initial vision are still there – especially in SMILE’s playfully eccentric instrumental palette. This album is all over the place. And it isn’t just eclectic with a purpose like much of Robinson’s past music – it sticks out among his catalogue for its lack of cohesion. Some tracks have instrumentals that sound like modified Nurture cuts; others vary from soft-spoken acoustic folk to emo-and-Eurodance slow burners to bombastic, 2000s-esque electropop. Many of these songs blend genres themselves, usually reflecting the split between Robinson’s diverse creative ambitions and his EDM roots. Results range from stunning (the raging new rave-inspired switch-up that concludes “Mona Lisa” absolutely rocks) to somewhat baffling (I don’t really get the chiptune solo that takes over the bridge of the guitar-driven ballad “Easier to Love You”).

But maybe that diversity is a goal in itself: after all, Robinson’s original desire for this album was to make music that “revels in absurdity”. And, in both its music and lyrics, SMILE succeeds in being sometimes absurd, even if it fails at being shallow fun. Even Robinson’s introspection can become a bit whimsical at times. For example, on “Kitsune Maison Freestyle” – named for a joint fashion brand and record label that curated some of the 2000’s most influential dance music – Robinson pairs an earnest critique of celebrity culture (“Didn't you see this coming? / Everything you thought you wanted was made out of nothing”) with tongue-in-cheek lyrics about luxury and ego (“I spend my money then I get it all back, all back / I might do a song with your mother, I think she wanna see me on the track, on the track”).

That’s not to say that Robinson’s occasional unseriousness somehow taints his sincerity. It’s the exact opposite – that goofiness almost always serves a broader purpose. It critiques materialism, admits the struggles of being a musician, describes being head-over-heels in love.

And in between those moments, Robinson spends a fair amount of time abandoning fun entirely, making for some of his darkest material yet. Instead of a hook, Robinson’s verses on “Year of the Cup” – which detail his struggles with substance abuse – are interspersed with soundbites of rapper Lil Wayne defending his former lean-drinking habit. Robinson’s lyrics about his experiences with alcohol are far more negative: he describes cries for help disguised as violent outbursts towards fans and staff, screaming out his self-hatred on stage, constantly apologising to loved ones but lacking the willpower to change. It’s the most brutally honest, difficult-to-listen-to song in Robinson’s discography.

Many other songs come pretty close, too. On “Easier to Love You,” Robinson simultaneously implores his partner to recognise her beauty while failing to recognise his own, telling his wife and younger self to “please be disappointed in me / isn’t it obvious I wasn’t who you think?”. Elsewhere, he talks about feeling attached to toxic fans, abusing drugs to feel something, being on the brink of suicide, and wanting to just live a normal life.

This is fundamentally a dark album. But it’s also fundamentally joyful – “Everything to Me” tells about being captured and fulfilled by even the most transient beauties, “Cheerleader” has the most euphoric hook of the year, and “Russian Roulette” concludes with a cathartic cry of “I want to live!”, for a few examples. In short, this album is complicated.

And that complexity represents a sea change in Robinson’s creative ethos. In every project he’s made before this one, he wrote stories – whether about fantasy worlds or his own life, every album was centred around a theme, or a narrative, or a style. On SMILE, however, Robinson writes about a life. The album’s themes, from celebrity culture to substance abuse to love, spread across the entire album and mix together and invade every corner of its writing; its musical inspirations are just as diverse. SMILE is messy – but so is the existence that Robinson writes about. At times, that makes the album feel unguided. But mostly, this is the first Porter Robinson album that feels entirely like him. That makes for one of the most compelling pieces of art he has ever released.