Ungodly Hour / Chloe x Halle / June 12, 2020
- Joshua Yoo
- Jun 25, 2020
- 1 min read
Updated: Sep 13, 2020
After painting a rather cleaner picture on their previous two projects, Chloe and Halle Bailey have essentially broken out of their shell. On “Ungodly Hour,” the Beyonce-backed duo shows a new sense of maturity and growth in their thematic focus and their incredibly hands-on production, pushing the sound of modern R&B to new heights.
It’s impossible not to immediately fixate on the sisters’ incredible vocal ability, their voices as clear, smooth, and powerful as ever before. Front to back, this project features vocal performances that just seem to so effortlessly float across all of the stylistically varying instrumentals. The chemistry that Chloe and Halle have is also seamless, leading to a lot of fun back-and-forth 1-2 punches (“Forgive Me”) and breathtakingly beautiful harmonies (“Ungodly Hour”).
While implementing some industry help, the project is impressively constructed mostly by the sisters alone, visible in the cohesiveness of the album as a whole. The production throughout is bouncy and sweet, and most significantly, versatile, bending elements of pop, traditional R&B, and trap to their liking and infusing them with their sticky songwriting and immersive vocals (“Baby Girl”). Only occasionally do spots of unvaried lyricism surface, leaving a sense of wanting more out of certain verses and hooks (“Busy Boy”).
Topically, the album deftly conveys what Chloe and Halle want to say on this new record. They’re new people, dealing with messier and more complicated themes, and they do a fantastic job of conveying them through an R&B project that is progressive in its construction yet timeless in its sound.
Best Track(s): Lonely, Ungodly Hour, Don’t Make It Harder On Me, Forgive Me
Lowlight(s): ROYL, Catch Up
SCORE: 7/10
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fo6vArKqiDA
Comments