Joji’s highly anticipated fourth studio album “Piss in the Wind” is a hodgepodge of powerful, unique Joji sound and hard-hitting tracks with short, unremarkable “vignette-style” interludes in between.
The buildup to the 21-track album’s release on Feb. 6, about three years after his third album, “SMITHEREENS,” was entertaining in itself. Joji, aka George Miller, kept a minimal public and almost completely silent social media presence after “SMITHEREENS” dropped.
As the release date drew nearer, Joji started posting on his Instagram more frequently, using a doppelganger and passing him off as himself — even going as far as changing the background photo on his Spotify account to a picture of the doppelganger, who the internet has dubbed “Joe. G” or “Jijo.”
The first track of the album starts strong with “PIXELATED KISSES.” It hits you in the face with a heavy beat featuring a loud, distorted bassline. The track has a catchy melody and well-written lyrics. It is a strong opener and the album’s most streamed track on Spotify, with over 110 million listens as of Feb. 15.
The track’s lyrics, “Pixelated kisses got me goin’ insane / Replicate this moment from a million miles away,” describe the difficulty of loving someone through a screen in a long distance relationship.
The second track on the album, “Cigarette,” is a quick-tempo hip-hop beat with a lot of hi-hat. The singing is a combination of Joji rapping paired with harmonizing background vocals, a style the artist honed on his third studio album.
The album’s momentum carries into the third song, “Last of a Dying Breed,” one of the album’s stronger tracks.
The track opens with a pleasing dark synth melody, followed by the same fast, hi hat-filled beat. Joji delivers a beautiful performance of vocal harmonization paired with his unique baritone melancholy singing.
“LOVE YOU LESS” is the album’s longest song, clocking in at 3:21. “LOVE YOU LESS” takes the listener into a completely different sound from the previous three tracks. The track features a slower tempo using real drums and guitar rather than the synth and drum machines from previous tracks.
“LOVE YOU LESS” has a shoegaze-type sound and contains beautifully emotional lyrics such as “If I love you less, will you love me more?” The guitar solo beneath Joji’s vocals swells into an emotional crescendo that leaves the listener wanting more.
Unfortunately, the previous four tracks’ momentum quickly falls off with “If it only gets better.” The track isn’t bad, it’s just boring. It’s Joji getting back to his roots with his lo-fi beats melancholy sound, but doesn’t match the album’s energy.
Tracks six, seven are also boring and largely feel like filler just to get to track eight, “Hotel California.”
Joji’s singing in this track is unpolished and detached, almost emotionally numb in a good way. The lyrics are superb, which gives the song a satisfyingly hazy, lonely feel.
From this point out, the album’s pattern emerges: two or three unremarkable, short tracks followed by a strong one, then two more unremarkable tracks.
Track nine, “Tarmac,” has a decent beat and lyrics but is boring. Track 10, “Forehead Touching the Ground,” is an OK throwback to early Joji, but kills the momentum. Track 11, “Past Won’t Leave My Bed,” though, is one of the album’s strongest and most beautiful tracks, with an equally beautiful music video that feels like it spiritually succeeds his “Glimpse of Us” music video.
We have to suffer through two more sleep-worthy songs before track 14, “Sojourn.”
This track earns its place as the album’s emotional and sonic peak, where Joji stops hinting and just delivers. “Sojourn” is hands-down the album’s best song, feeling complete with fantastic energy.
Musically, the track has a saturated, noisy soundscape with structural switch-ups, which makes it feel like an explosion out of nowhere compared to the mostly subdued vignette-style tracks in the rest of the album.
Disappointingly, after “Sojourn’s” powerful artistry, tracks 15 to 20 are weak and unremarkable, with the exception of track 17, “Silhouette Man,” which delivers a decent vocal performance with an “easy-to-nod-to” beat.
“Dior” ends the album on a semi-high note. The track opens as a familiar Joji ballad before switching halfway through to an aggressive, haunting beat.
Just when the intensity seems to be building, “Dior” ends, leaving more questions than answers for the album as a whole: Was this the emotional payoff we were waiting for? Was this really the best Joji could offer after three years away?
Overall, Joji did an OK job with this album, but it was not his strongest work. I’m looking forward to Joji’s return to the musical scene and excited for what comes next.
