"Baby, I got you/ Until you're used to my face, and my mystery fades," Abel Tesfaye sang on "Rolling Stone". It was a surprisingly self-effacing line for a singer whose mystique is a central part of his appeal. And he's not wrong. By now, we know most of Tesfaye's tricks: his choir-worthy voice, his debauched lyrics, and the rich tapestry of synths and samples that backs it all up. His third full-length in nine months, Echoes of Silence, is more self-referential than ever, repeating lines and themes from previous records, including XO cognac (or ecstasy and oxycontin, if you prefer), questionably consensual sex, and self-destructive behavior. It was novel on his debut House of Balloons, but does it still work three albums in?
Well, it turns out Tesfaye isn't out of surprises: As his fans now know, opening track "D.D." stands for "Dirty Diana", and Tesfaye channels the King of Pop with an eerily accurate vocal facsimile. It's an audacious intro even for an artist whose output has already stretched lyrical and musical themes to depraved extremes. The ease with which Tesfaye can shock and awe listeners at this point feels like something of a victory lap.
Where House of Balloons was a debut tour-de-force, and Thursday an arduous journey into the internal turmoil of a self-loathing narcissist, Echoes of Silence exudes a brazen, animalistic confidence: The production is impeccable but never showy. The songwriting is tighter and more streamlined. The slinky, spectral "Montreal" is the closest thing to a pure pop song Tesfaye has written since "What You Need". And his conversational intonation emphasizes the lingering threat that underlies every lyric.
In lyrical terms, Echoes of Silence is Tesfaye's strongest work. With a clearer and less obtuse narrative arc than Thursday, the album finds his snaky, manipulative persona at its most blatantly corrosive. Album centerpiece "XO / The Host" is a stomach-turning tale of corruption and coercion, featuring one of the record's most uncomfortable moments: After Tesfaye sings of reducing some nameless girl to destitution, the beat goes quiet as he self-satisfyingly mocks, "And if they won't let you in/ You know where to find me... 'cause all we ever do is love." It's transparently deceptive, and it slips into "Initiation", a cringe-inducingly detailed tale of drug-fueled kidnapping and gang-rape told through the part-grunted, part-rapped exhortations of an inhuman goblin.
With drums that stutter and slice more like Trent Reznor than Tricky, "Initiation" handily defines what separates the Weeknd from other R&B acts, folding in the post-punk influences, the industrial touches, and that oddly alluring menace into four minutes of captivating hell. While Tesfaye's voice remains the star attration, Illangelo's production is at a high point on Echoes: From the decadent "Hong Kong Garden" orientalisms on "Outside" to the heart-rending vocal looping on "The Host" to the sleepy-eyed, morning-after bluntness of "Same Old Song", each lecherous tale is lifted by the attentive and elegant production. Those tiny strokes of detail-oriented genius pull Echoes of Silence from "yet another Weeknd mixtape" to its own lithe, cocksure plateau, the same way that the meandering production on Thursday emphasized the numbingly sublime feeling of loss and confusion.
A lot has been said of how Tesfaye has run amok with the introspective R&B of artists like Drake and Trey Songz, but the particulars of self-abuse and excess haven't been profiled so intimately or persuasively by any act of comparable size or influence. Of course, all Weeknds must end: producer Clams Casino guest produces "The Fall", and his mournful melodies and distorted synths climax in a locust cloud of buzzing and whirring, suddenly rendering Tesfaye's self-reassurances shaky and hollow. The album's eponymous closing track is stark naked, a hospital-bed lament so unflinchingly bright it recalls the Knife's "Still Light" in its mournful fatalism. Tesfaye sounds near tears, and as Echoes peters out with his whimpering, "Don't you leave me all behind/ Don't you leave my little life," it's difficult to tell whether he's quoting a nameless victim or gasping the words himself.
Those four minutes of unguarded sparsity -- Tesfaye's quivering falsetto and a funereal piano-- unwind 2011's most exciting, conflicting, and self-mythologizing musical universe. On closer "Echoes of Silence", is Tesfaye's protagonist finally unraveling or merely beginning anew? That his loosely narrative album trilogy seems like it could begin and end at any one of its entry points seems to hint at the latter. It's a chillingly cyclical picture of decay and self-immolation marking the Weeknd's greatest triumph: an emotional thread so confusing we can love, hate, fear, and be revolted all at once.
Tesfaye's recycling of previous lyrics, melodies, and ideas on Echoes of Silence is bound to give fresh ammo to fairweather fans eager to hurl accusations of diminishing returns and unimaginative retreads at the rising Toronto star. But the repetition is akin to devices used by artists as separate as Terius Nash and Dan Bejar, a self-contained world of idiosyncratic artistry that the Weeknd's trilogy ambitiously embraces, rising above the catcalls of inauthenticity and "PBR&B" lashed at it from the very beginning to somewhere else completely its own.
"I used to do this for the thrill," Tesfaye laments on penultimate Echoes track "Next", and even as his world disintegrates into the desolate closer, it's hard to think of anything more morbidly thrilling in 2011 than listening to the Weeknd methodically destroy himself. Echoes may lack the surprise-and-delight factor of House of Balloons, but it's a strong finish to Tesfaye's first trilogy, providing just enough closure to satisfy, and just enough mystery left to entice us back for the next round.
