★★★★☆
Five years in the making, Troye Sivan’s latest album serves as a sophisticated, vibrant exploration of love, sexuality, and human connection. Here’s our Something To Give Each Other review.
Troye Sivan is truly the poster boy of modern digital stardom; from his adolescent musings captured on YouTube, right up to the apprehensive exploration of sexuality on his tender debut, Sivan’s life has been lived under a microscope.
This thorough documentation of his life has resulted in an entirely different breed of popstar – something far more intimate. With every release, Sivan builds on an ongoing journey of self-realisation, each record maturing into something sharper, bolder and more defined than its predecessor. Something To Give Each Other, with its wistful longing, pulsing lust and evergreen charm of vulnerability, serves up the most mature version of the Australian to date.
Perhaps the most out-there shift of this record is Sivan being an unapologetic party boy. While 2018’s Bloom featured a selection of dancefloor-worthy beats, this record is thrumming with pounding club anthems. Single ‘Rush’ opens things on a dizzying high, immediately throwing you into the thick of a sweltering dancefloor. The R&B sonic whirlwind is fizzling in a daze, a laughing-gas-fuelled rush to the head that lures you in with its potent sexuality.
A baring, sensual energy ties this record together. At times, Sivan’s sonic sensuality absolutely glistens; ‘Shooting Stars’ sampler ‘Got Me Started’ is a hypnotic, feather-light pop homage to falling in love, while ‘What’s The Time Where You Are?’ is equally as sparkling, club beat lazily thumping as it relishing in it’s love-adled magic. ‘Honey’ serves as a euphoric, honey-thick mantra honouring love and sex.
Yet there are moments where the sex-posi mask slips, and the ‘party boy’ persona falls away. Sivan is still documenting the trials and tribulations of love – his lyrics have always served as a diary, and this record is no different. ‘One Of Your Girls’ is a woozy dose of longing; with its gentle, vocoder-tinged flow, the track is a reflection on sleeping with ‘straight’ men. As the track slowly oozes out, Sivan promising to be like ‘one of your girls’, the undercurrent of woe stings ever-so softly, leaving a bittersweet taste of regret and shameful yearning on your tongue.
The confessional lyrics also come in the form of ‘Still Got It’ and ‘Can’t Go Back, Baby’. The pair could very well sit on Sivan’s debut Blue Neighbourhood, the stripped-back sound perfectly suited to the lyrical nostalgia at play. The tracks unfold gracefully, languishing in their sepia-tinged vignettes and memories. Again, it’s vulnerability done with total class.
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The shifting sonic palette at play really amplifies the hit of each track. And the patchwork of sounds really creates a sense of Sivan being a truly contemporary popstar. From the throwbacks to his earlier records’ sounds, to the samples, to the more robotic, frazzled vocal effects, this record stitches together sounds of the past and future with ease. Having the back-and-forth of ‘Silly’, a track that sees Sivan duets with himself, alongside tracks like saxophone-drunk ‘How To Stay With You’, this record tackles each sound with a distinctive flourish.
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It’s been five years since his last full-length record, and the wait has been worth it; Something To Give Each Other is Troye Sivan’s gift to modern pop music. The self-confessed “love-junkie” has served up a short and sweet burst of pop prowess, a back-to-back celebration of being alive and fully embracing all forms of human connection. It’s a step-by-step guide to love, lust, heartbreak and falling in love all over again – and it is a total delight.
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