To kick off his first full-length album since 2016, Donald Glover starts with ‘0.00’, a track that goes nowhere, and then just ends. It’s the equivalent of trying to pull away with the handbrake on, killing all momentum and almost bringing the whole thing to a grinding halt before it's even begun.
This shaky start is an indicator of what’s to come, as Glover delivers his most messy and inconsistent project yet with 3.15.20, an album with no clear sense of theme, identity or cohesion. ‘Algorhythm’, the first true track on the album, just feels like a poor Childish Gambino pastiche, with the semi-rapped, semi-sung vocals accompanied by pitched-up vocals and moody RnB production that just falls a bit flat. There’s some corny lyrics and a blunt instrumental that are a far cry from anything we heard on his previous albums. Gone are the concious bars of Because The Internet or 70's infused funk of Awaken My Love, now it's just slightly underwhelming RnB cuts. ‘Time’ is an equally unrewarding listen, trying to lure the listener in with those ‘This Is America’ style 808s and Ariana Grande vocals before battering them round the head with jangly guitar chords, irritating clicks and messy overlapping vocals - it feels like they threw a lot of shit at a wall and none of it stuck.
This, is an apt metaphor for the album as a whole.
After this point, Glover ditches conventional song names entirely and just opts for codes. I’m not entirely opposed to this, it worked well on Kendrick’s Untitled Unmastered, but with that album I actually wanted to listen to every track and on this album… not so much.
‘12.38’ is another dud, some saccharine lyrics weaving around piano chords, synths and what sounds like a dripping tap. At times it sounds like an Anderson Paak rip off. At other times it sounds like an early Childish Gambino rip off, all the ideas being there but sounding not quite right. The best bit of the entire song is the 21 Savage verse - that says it all.
‘19.10’ has some nice moments but at almost five minutes, it feels bloated as the song has so much energy but seems to go nowhere. The outro is just straight up trash.
This length issue is something a lot of the songs suffer with, having the drive and bounce behind them but failing to capitalise upon any of it, powering on to reach an unsatisfying conclusion. ‘24.19’ is a good example of this, stretching on for what seems like eternity but turns out to be just over 7 minutes.
Even songs that aren’t long, feel long. ‘32.22’ is a good example of this.
‘35.31’ sounds like the happy guitar vocal part in ‘This Is America’ before that geezer gets shot in the head but without the dark twist. Without this, the tracks ends up sounding like music for a yoghurt advert, relentlessly cheery, and saccharine. It just sounds a bit too sickly and feels at odds with a lot of the dark RnB aesthetics Glover is trying to implement at the start of the album. I understand that Glover is trying to be self-aware and play with expectations but, on tracks like this, it just feels lazy.
‘42.26’ is the saving grace of the album, an actually decent track with some tasteful production and a summery instrumental that provides a perfect bed for Glover to flex his vocal chops. It’s a shame we’ve heard it before, as it’s just the single ‘Feels Like Summer’ he released last year.
3.15.20 is an album overrun by contradictions and awkward juxtapositions, trying to play with some big ideas and themes but failing to land any of them successfully. Buried in amongst the mess, there are some half decent tracks and, although the production is inconsistent, you can’t fault the shimmer and polish that it brings to the project. There was so much scope for brilliance with this album but it tries to be too clever and ends falling unfortunately flat, Glover's first identity crisis as a musician.
4/10
Alex Thompson
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