A little less than a decade ago—after a traumatic and tragic stint in Miami that led to time spent in a psychiatric care unit—Yung Lean began working on an album that he said sounded like a combination between Daniel Johnston and Lil Wayne. “I’m gonna release it as Yung Lean,” he told The Fader in 2016. “You put out three rap albums, then you can do whatever you like.” The resulting record didn’t really sound like the combination he described, and he didn’t release it as Yung Lean either, instead putting out the post-punk-inspired Psychopath Ballads as jonatan leandoer127. Since then, Lean has often used this alias (which he changed to jonatan leandoer96 in 2018) to channel his alternative, non-rap creative impulses: collaborations with Dean Blunt, covers of This Mortal Coil, folk songs sung in Swedish. Elements of the side project have seeped into his work as Yung Lean as well; over the years, as he’s navigated maturity and sobriety, his albums have reliably featured more personal songwriting and genre experimentation. Fans track his character development with each new release.
Jonatan, his fifth studio album as Yung Lean, is an attempt at merging his various musical identities under one banner. Executive produced by Frank Ocean collaborator Rami Dawod, with contributions from Oneohtrix Point Never and Beck, the album’s 13 songs are built around pared-down guitar and piano melodies and sparse drums, pushing Lean himself to center stage. This emphasis on his voice makes for some raw moments when Lean’s idiosyncratic delivery and the blunt production meet each other eye to eye. At other times, Jonatan’s stripped-down framework highlights his limitations as a vocalist and songwriter, veering into pastiche.
The album is Lean’s reckoning with breaking up, getting older, and spending the past 12 years making music for public consumption. In the video for “Forever Yung,” the first single, he holds a funeral procession for a past version of himself dressed as a king. The song’s narrator searches for authenticity in a world full of artifice, and its industrial rockabilly swing lends itself to Lean’s subdued melody. His ABBA interpolation (and halfway Gil Scott-Heron interpolation) on “Might Not B” sounds at home over a buzzing bassline, while his abstract writing and monotone sing-song are well suited to the toy music box synth on “Paranoid Paparazzi.” The album whirrs when the production is at its most dynamic: the Coldplay-like string hits on “I’m Your Dirt, I’m Your Love,” and the dramatic choral backing on the OPN-assisted “Terminator Symphony” support some of the album’s most captivating vocal performances. On “Teenage Symphonies 4 God (God Will Only),” Lean fully commands the backing track, his voice full of anguish as he wails, “I’ve been so cold to everybody that loves me.”
The Yung Lean catalog is buoyed by the skillful, ever-evolving production of longtime collaborators Gud, Whitearmor, and Yung Sherman. In contrast, for his leandoer96 releases, he’s turned to a different generation of Scandinavian outsiders: The Tough Alliance collaborator Kendal Johansson, Joakim Benon from the Swedish electronic duo jj, and Frederik Valentin of Rock Hard Power Spray and the label Posh Isolation. Lean continues this trend with Dawod, and their proto-punk and no wave-influenced sound is faithful if not groundbreaking on a song like “Horses.” Elsewhere, it sounds as if recording songs in this style was a creative decision made beforehand, not because these arrangements are the best expression of his ideas. “Babyface Maniacs” and “Changes” are particularly unimaginative and canned; the despondent delivery on the latter track is quintessential Lean but the rote hook—“Changes they come, changes they go/Life goes over and over again”—sounds hollow over the near-atonality of the instrumental.
There’s a reason Yung Lean has endured well beyond his initial internet virality. He’s grown as a person and an artist, and, through his music, he’s let his fans in on the messy, nonlinear process. The distance between Jonatan’s rugged, monochrome rock and the lush synths and 808s of his early work is interesting, but that on its own doesn’t inherently make these songs great. The strength of Lean’s music has always been in its juxtapositions: crushing vulnerability over bright melodies, simple flexes next to existentialism. In swinging all the way towards one sound for this album, he’s lost small parts of what made both his side project and his main project special. He never quite found that combination of Daniel Johnston and Lil Wayne, and it sounds like he’s still yet to find a way to unite the disparate parts of Yung Lean.
