Browse some of the recent profiles of 21-year-old singer-songwriter Ekkstacy, and two details appear over and over: First, his biggest song, the airy “i walk this earth all by myself,” has a lot of streams. Second, although he began his career in high school making SoundCloud emo rap, he’s now proudly an indie rocker. Neither genre translates well on his new self-titled album, one of the most assertively generic releases in recent memory. These thickly shellacked songs lack the disaffected-but-exciting undercurrent that Ekkstacy’s influences share; they also ignore the elegance of his higher vocal register, which resonated on his early self-releases. The result is a clinically impersonal record that reveals nearly nothing about the artist for which it’s named.
Initially, Ekkstacy modeled his sound after the misty, arpeggiated ennui of late-2010s grunge rappers like XXXTentacion. His early releases—“the sadness in my smile” and “uncomparable”—achieve a tidy, if derivative, style reminiscent of the late Florida rapper’s 2017 album 17, while “broken/feelings 2” played with the drawn-out syllables and big hooks of predecessors like Juice WRLD and Chief Keef. A comment on one of Ekkstacy’s first SoundCloud tracks sums up the lovelorn resentment of that era of his sound: “showed him this now he play it for other bitches.”
When Ekkstacy took a familiar turn from emo rap towards rock, he did some homework, dutifully embracing a Misfits-lite sound and naming a bright, uncharacteristically energetic track on his 2022 album misery after ’80s goth rock pioneers Christian Death. His latest album is a set of underpowered, faintly grungy power-pop that washes up alongside mid-aughties beach bands like Wavves or Beach Fossils. Those tentpole inspirations stand on either side of a project that seems to exist at the expense of Ekkstacy himself, a young musician whose interests have been chemically weather-treated for commercial success.
At barely over 30 minutes long, EKKSTACY feels like a slog. The mood is one of vague sadness that drowns out his delicate voice both literally and figuratively. Cliché lyrics (“I don’t wanna smile/I just want to cry”) run together unconvincingly over foamy production from Deb Never collaborator Apob and the Contra Gang producer Manget$u. Their smooth touches only soften an environment that’s already desperate for some thrown elbows, out-of-nowhere synth breaks, or full-throated guitar solos.
Instead, every riff is dulled down until the details bleed together like a blurred Zoom meeting background. A Trippie Redd feature on the pretty earworm “problems” barely registers. The Kid Laroi, whose polished vocals provide a minor jolt to the otherwise forgettable “alright,” fares better. But it’s nearly impossible to pinpoint specific moments of interest before they’re quelled by the anonymous room tone of the album. A song about a nondescript but beautiful girl titled “bella” is not the antidote.
Ekkstacy does eke out some breathing room amid the suffocating same-old. The crashing two-part climax on “the headless horseman lost his way” achieves some gratifying catharsis on either side of its muted, bedroom-pop vocal loop. “fuck” is fun in a dopey way, probably because it involves a lot of yelling “fuck” with the occasional “yeah!” But these flashes of raw energy are swallowed by the surrounding chaff, and a jerky riff that thrilled for 20 seconds on TikTok fades into tedious wallpaper punk. EKKSTACY winds up feeling as diaristic as a cue card.
