The album opens with a promising, scene-setting piano arpeggio a la Fiona Apple's “I Want You To Love Me,” but Fetch the Bolt Cutters this is not. Instead, Walk Me Home… is a half-hour of plodding, cloying ballads, with few shifts in dynamics or tone. Its homogeneity is almost impressive, as is its commitment to sparse, Instagram-filter-production that isolates Boone’s piano playing and voice.
Boone first gained notoriety as a contestant on American Idol, which is all you need to know about his vocal style. His singular mode is a strained, impassioned belt that he’ll pitch up to a falsetto when he needs to signify sensitivity; his pronunciation is almost parodically indie. It makes for a sound that was ubiquitous in department stores circa 2007, which gives Walk Me Home... a jarringly dated quality. “I’ve been listening to Imagine Dragons’ music my whole life,” Boone said earlier this year, and Walk Me Home… is a rich testament to his devotion. It’s all there: the unbearably high yet nonspecific drama; the cavernous reverb, the pounding drum beats that mark every chorus; the seemingly AI-generated lyrics (“You stole a part of me when you left / Nothing but a hole in my chest / Now you're coming back for the rest”) and the raw, full-throated passion with which he sings them.
One of the most spectacular qualities of Walk Me Home… is that listening to it alone with headphones – which should, in theory, facilitate greater intimacy with the music – actually emphasises its vast, impersonal emptiness. It seems meant for no one, too broad in its style to feasibly target a specific audience yet too impersonal to be for Boone himself.
There are a few inspired moments here though: the distant, aquatic guitar that swims through “Better Alone” begins to reach towards the woozy post-Blonde register that works for Daniel Caesar. “ROOM FOR 2” toggles between strummed verses and clipped, galloping choruses that Boone pouts over like a sanitised The Weeknd.
It’s cynical to suggest that pop stars these days must equip themselves with some marketable shtick or identity to advertise; Boone, almost refreshingly, doesn’t even try. In this sense, there’s something admirable about his sincerity – there is no gimmick here, no backstory, no identity, no frontier within which to locate himself. It is just Benson Boone roaring at the piano. He is neither tender nor rugged; disaffected rich kid nor gritty underdog. He is sometimes a heartbreaker and sometimes heartbroken but neither informs his image. Were he to team up with an engaging producer, perhaps Boone could provide the answer to the seldom-asked question, “What if John Legend were white?” Until then, he will be as lost as his album cover suggests.
