POST MALONE: F-1 Trillion (Island)
Verdict: Epic Country Music Tribute
American superstars Taylor Swift and Beyoncé choose their collaborators carefully. An artist invited into the studio by both clearly has something special to offer.
Then there’s Post Malone, a Texas-raised singer and rapper who appears on Swift’s The Tortured Poets Department and Beyoncé’s country album Cowboy Carter.
What’s more, the duets in question — “Fortnight” on Taylor’s LP and Levii’s “Jeans” on Cowboy Carter — are highlights of some of the year’s best albums, with Post’s tender voice pairing seamlessly with two of the most famous women in pop music.
The 29-year-old, bearded and heavily tattooed man is anything but impressed and convinces himself.
If those collaborations came as a surprise to fans who saw him as an R&B and hip-hop phenomenon who occasionally strayed into alternative rock — like when he live-streamed a set of Nirvana covers from his home during lockdown — his latest move will come as an even bigger shock: on F-1 Trillion, Malone has made a feel-good country record.
Post Malone, a Texas-raised singer and rapper who appears on Swift’s The Tortured Poets Department and Beyoncé’s country album Cowboy Carter
F-1 Trillion is more of a loving tribute than a groundbreaking venture, which is debatable
Perhaps his decision to don a cowboy hat isn’t so unusual. Country music is on the rise.
In addition to Beyoncé’s album, Shania Twain performed at Glastonbury in 2024 and Zayn Malik got tips from Nashville.
Shaboozey’s A Bar Song (Tipsy) is one of the songs of the summer and Lana Del Rey is currently working on a country record.
So, does Post Malone bring anything new to the rodeo? With F-1 Trillion being a loving homage rather than a groundbreaking endeavor, that’s debatable.
But with the singer backed by a star-studded cast of the best and most talented singers and rhinestone divas, including Chris Stapleton and Dolly Parton, there is no doubting his singing talent and his ability to tell a good story.
It’s an album full of hard-luck stories and songs about hard drinking. “I got ten problems down in Tennessee, and I ain’t got the time to fix ’em all,” he sings on “Wrong Ones,” a duet with Tim McGraw.
In the song Pour Me A Drink, which he sings together with Blake Shelton, he drowns his sorrows over a speeding ticket and the fact that the American football team, the Dallas Cowboys, lost at the last minute.
F-1 Trillion occasionally verges on cliché. It’s also far too long — its original release, as an 18-track single LP last weekend, was followed by the release of nine more songs as part of an expanded “Long Bed” edition.
The quality of the texts is high, but there is still a lot to process.
On I Had Some Help, sung with Morgan Wallen, Malone’s melodic instincts come to the fore, while the uptempo duet Have The Heart with Dolly is laced with trademark Parton stardust and humor.
“Do you want to hear something sexy?” she teases. “I like the way my bed looks over your boots, and those bell-bottoms I’m wearing make it hard to walk outside.”
Post Malone’s F-1 Trillion album (pictured) is the rapper’s sixth studio album (pictured: Post Malone performs in Times Square on July 18)
Post Malone’s latest album features stories of misfortune and songs about hard drinking
On California Sober, a duet with Stapleton, he picks up a female hitchhiker who steals his wallet, while MEXICO, sung with bluegrass star Billy Strings, begins with him having a relationship with the daughter of a Brooklyn diplomat. After a series of amusing mishaps, he ends up in a Mexican prison.
The nine-track Long Bed bonus album, however, opens with songs of a darker hue. Dead At The Honky Tonk is the tale of a broken lover drinking himself into an early grave, while Killed A Man is a classic murder ballad — that’s two bodies in the first three tracks.
But then the mood brightens: Back To Texas is an ode to his home state and Ain’t How It Ends is a tribute to the art of writing country songs.
Could his protagonists live happily ever after? “That’s not how it ends in a country song,” he concludes, closing an expansive but passionate love letter to Nashville.
FONTAINES DC: Romance (XL)
Verdict: Ambitious indie rock
Like tour mates Arctic Monkeys, Dublin five-piece Fontaines DC have moved away from their raw indie rock roots and towards something more cinematic.
In an era where guitar groups are struggling, their 2022 LP Skinty Fia topped the UK charts and helped them win a BRIT Award, and new album Romance is only set to accelerate their progress towards arena headliner status.
Named after a character, Johnny Fontane, from The Godfather (DC stands for Dublin City), the band now embraces everything from lush ballads to ’90s nu-metal, but still offers something for older fans who grew up on the ’80s post-punk rock of Echo & The Bunnymen and fellow Irishmen U2 (the group covered U2’s One in 2022).
Dublin five-piece Fontaines DC (pictured lead singer Grian Chatten) have made the transition from their raw indie rock roots to something more cinematic.
There are also echoes of The Cure on the eerie title track, which sees 29-year-old frontman Grian Chatten sing about sinking “into the darkness” before wondering if “romance is a place for you and me”.
There’s a similar tension in Starburster, inspired by a panic attack at a train station, and the sinister Death Kink, about a toxic relationship.
But it’s the ballads that steal the show. Horseness Is The Whatness, its title borrowed from James Joyce’s Ulysses, is bolstered by strings. In The Modern World, all twangy guitars, owes a debt to Lana Del Rey, a singer Chatten has long admired. Their ambition continues to grow.
Fontaines DC play Reading Festival tomorrow and Leeds Festival on Sunday. They kick off a UK tour at The Halls, Wolverhampton, on November 20
The best of the new releases:
GILLIAN WELCH & DAVID RAWLINGS: Forest (Acony)
The First Couple of modern Americana are back with a record named after their Nashville studio, a former theater that was completely restored after it was badly damaged by a tornado in 2020.
Welch, who grew up in California, breathes new life into traditional styles. On Here Stands A Woman she harks back to the blues of the past and on the acoustic ballad North Country she sings of her love for the deep south.
Rawlings adds classic singer-songwriter influences, reminiscent of Neil Young’s falsetto on What We Had and Bob Dylan’s Turf The Gambler.
The premier pair of modern Americana return with a record named after their Nashville studio, a former theater that was completely restored after it was badly damaged by a tornado in 2020.
ROSIE LOWE: Lover, Different (Blue Flowers)
London-based singer Rosie Lowe packed her portable recording equipment into a bag and traveled to Barcelona and Berlin to write the songs for her third solo album.
The result is an independently oriented release that makes the most of her intimate, close-miked vocals and understated electronic grooves, while cleverly varying the tempos.
Mood To Make Love is slow and sultry, while In My Head — powered by Jamie Woon’s guitar — is more danceable. “Something’s got me stirling in the summer breeze,” she sings. It’s a subtle delight.
London-based singer Rosie Lowe packed her portable recording equipment into a bag and travelled to Barcelona and Berlin to record the songs for this, her third solo album.
LISZT: Faust Symphony, etc. (BIS)
The movements on this disc feature Faust, Gretchen and Mephistopheles, the length decreases from 30 minutes to 16 minutes, and a remarkably good recording shows excellent playing by the Royal Philharmonic of Liège
One of the composers who was impressed by Goethe’s Faust was Franz Liszt, who completed this symphony in 1854.
At the premiere in 1857 he had already written a choral finale, but Wagner preferred the original three-movement version we hear here.
The movements feature Faust, Gretchen and Mephistopheles, decreasing in length from 30 minutes to 16, and a remarkably good recording reveals excellent playing from the Liège Royal Philharmonic, conducted by the Hungarian Gergely Madaras. He adds the Mephisto Waltz No. 1 as a fitting encore.
Number of the week:
DIE WITH A SMILE Lady Gaga & Bruno MarsLady
Gaga was in Malibu when Bruno Mars invited her to collaborate. Mixing Lady Gaga’s dramatic prowess with Mars’s best falsetto, the results are reminiscent of ’70s soul harmony groups.