Finneas - Optimist

I kinda hate to be that guy, but nobody was "highly awaiting" Billie Eilish's brother's debut solo album back in 2021, unless by "high" you mean actually high in a neurotoxiny kind of way, because this is a "Tire Fire 2020" album nobody needed. 

Don't get me wrong, dude makes some killer beats, i just don't believe anyone was telling him he's Carole King level awesome and definitely needs to also be out in front of them. More like he couldn't get 20 random people in the studio to cough and sneeze on each other, so why not just make a whole album yourself? I could totally be wrong, but i did hedge my bets with a 3rd album i know i'll like. I'm trying to be fair, but it's hard when "Billie Eilish's brother" is an actual part of your marketing campaign. It's very, very similar to something like "wanna hear Lee McKinney from Born Of Osiris Sandlecore into your eardrums for an hour?" Nope, not even remotely, but we're gonna give Optimist a shot from only a mildly pessimistic perspective. 

Not gonna lie, i have no idea what computer generated glass/water ballerinas have to do with anything straightforward OR sarcastic. Maybe she hopes to be a superstar, but keeps getting smashed upon the rocky shores of not actually being real. Gatefold helps a little, you can't say "i guess i'm an optimist" in a non-sarcastic fashion without simultaneously convincing me that you're an idiot, so either this will be fine or HOLY SHIT HOW DO YOU CRAM THAT MUCH PASSIVE AGGRESSION INTO 13 SONG TITLES!? Definitely a gradual unfolding, the track list seriously reads like the absolute dregs of Bad Emo, but Finneas is a Hip Hop producer, so what on earth am i about to force my remaining brain cells to digest? Only 1 way to find out. 

Ok, that's actually a perfectly lovely opening track. It completely clarifies the concept, but in doing so it creates 2 fairly massive problems for the listener. First, you have to remember that we all spent the better part of 2 years (not 6 months) hiding from a globally horrible respiratory virus, musicians had to cancel tours, venues went bankrupt, etc. Second, wishing you could get back into a relationship that already crashed and burned is stupid. Don't get me wrong, it's a real thing people feel when they don't know better, but you're supposed to take that failed experience forward with you and try really hard to not replicate it, not butterfy effect that earlier trainwreck into something even worse. No doubt about it, we're in for a whole lot more sad sackery. On the plus side, at least we know, and as far as contemporary Pop Rock goes this first track is completely tolerable. 

Oh my goodness, The Kids Are All Dying is much more what i expected, and it's fantastic. It's like if AWOL Nation never lost their sense of humor. 

Wow, he turns "Happy Now?" around and makes it self deprecating. I know i pointed it out with Brandy, but money only solves problems caused by not having money, it doesn't solve actual human problems. 

The 90s? How old is Finneas? Born in '97, so it's like if i were singing nostalgically about the late '70s having been born in 1980. Not really the point, the point is he was born right at the cusp of the internet age. I kinda have to crack my neck and take a breath, but i see where he's coming from. I'm pretty hard on his wasteland of the '00s and '10s. Let's just say no, you're wrong, nobody's "romanticizing" the 90s, that decade was legit insane. Yeah, we carried skateboards around the mall and hung out in coffee shops and slowly realized there was no real future for any of us. No cell phones, slow dial-up bulletin boards and early AOL, nobody having any idea where you were until you called them from a payphone to come pick you up, Radiohead telling us exactly how much now is going to suck. I actually remember the first time someone described how great this new online shopping thing would be and recoiled in terror in 1998. Trump running for president was a pretty funny joke that could never ever in a million years happen back then. Lots of racism and misogyny, but way more empowerment to fight back about it. So yeah, Finneas, take it from a guy 17 years older than you, both the good and the bad you've heard stories about are completely true because "parents" basically didn't exist outside of end of day debriefing time, the good video games existed at the arcade, and movies got rented on VHS because we were all more like generationally divided roommates just trying to get along. I'd go back to the 90s in a heartbeat for the music alone. 

Which amazingly enough brings me back on topic. I take it back, man, this is good. Glass Animals and The 1975 and Lana Del Rey kind of poisoned me against you, but nevermind that i was old enough to drink when you were barely old enough to form long-term memories, you're pushing all my favorite elevator buttons. What's Side B got for us? 

Lovely little melancholy piano intro. The burning of Edinburgh in 1544 is a bizarrely specific/obscure reference. The persecution of famous people for having human opinions. Being famous sucks because you don't really have a life of your own, you're just someone else's vicarious dream. Sexual fantasy. Blah blah blah, yadda yadda, ooooohhhh there we go. He tells her to dance if she wants to dance. I'm not entirely certain it's really the Pinnochio moment it purports to be, but no wonder he felt like he was hanging with the wrong crowd. Yeah, nobody under 30 will even remotely understand this album. This is only understandable after you've actually lived it; sarcasm had its run from 1985 to 2003, and you totally missed out. 

The moral of this story is love the one you're with and learn how to enjoy seeing other people happy 'cause the world isn't going to magically get better. No prize at the end of the ego trip rainbow, they'll cut you down just to count your rings, do what you want to do while you can. This album is literally that Jimmy Eat World song, and Finneas is the little girl in the middle of the ride. 

Unlike the rest of the twitterweb, i enjoyed this quite a lot. It's a good album. I don't like the concept of being sarcastically optimistic about getting back together with your ex-borlfriend after the pandemic, but the songs trace a coherent trajectory from romanticizing the past out of lonely desperation to a critique of the larger socioeconomic hyperbole of the time and a realization that this is merely a moment that gives us the opportunity to reset and reclaim our own love and happiness. It's a super specific perspective that can't possibly appeal to a broader audience, but i think he did a great job of it. Better than Scaled and Icy, which came across as "i know, let's just drink this bottle of Goop and not be 21 Pilots anymore." I only pick on Gwyneth Paltrow because she's not dumb, but she uses that dumb blonde cliche to sell expensive nonsense; "i don't even know how to spell placebo, tee hee." 

I only bring that up because it's what a lot of these pandemic albums actually are: placebo effect your way back to delusionally ignorant bliss. By comparison, Optimist is much more a survey of the mundane situation and rejection of ideas that aren't personally productive. Vicarious nostalgia is still a panacea, but if it honestly works for you, go for it. Doesn't work for me, but i'm not you and i fully admit that leaning into the pain doesn't work for most people. 

So yeah, all in all a surprisingly good Pop album, no wonder it flopped.