Avicii - Stories

Avicii
Stories
2015

Swedish producer Avicii is back to follow up is 2013 monster True with this new release Stories. On this record Avicii is definitely taking more chances here, focusing more on the house aspect of his music rather than the drop heavy EDM side. He is trying to truly create music rather than getting people on the dance floor and it is quite refreshing. Avicii being one of the most successful DJs in the world could have sat back, played a few clubs and put out an album filled with fist pumps, but He did not. He went into the lab for a couple of years and came out with something legitimately interesting. "For a Better Day" would even be difficult to call electronic music as it is mostly a piano and singer with some kick drums backing it up. However "Broken Arrows" (feeaturing Zac Brown) follows right on it's heels bringing back the Housey goodness with a country style vocal. That is the nice thing about this record, there is always a little surprise right around the corner, nothing is quite as it originally seems. The album as a whole would be tough to call EDM because it really does not add much to that genre, it is something else something much more eclectic.

However the second half of the album does descend into a bit of chaos. The country music aspect becomes far less subtle and far more in your face. It starts to get quite odd rather than eclectic, weird rather than interesting. The use of country is not exactly pandering from his biggest hit "Wake Me Up" but it does feel like a grasp at former glory. Those songs don't exactly fit on a album that is trying to be different from where Avicii has been. With this in mind the entire record settles at a mid range level. There are a couple standouts but there is not much here that has potential of really breaking through. Something is in this album, and Avicii as a whole, but this record is not the one that is going to really break him wide open, in any genre.

6 out of 10