Hi, everyone. Choppedthony Unctano here, the internet's busiest music nerd, and it's time for a review of this Boko Yout project, GUSTO.

This is the debut album from up-and-coming Swedish rock outfit, Boko Yout, a record that dropped in the fall of last year and pretty much helped solidify the buzz that they had going off of a series of single and EP releases since 2022. All of these recordings, all this progression has come together into this fully realized tracklist of DAW rock bangers, meaning that for a rock album, it doesn't have a super live, in-the-moment, organic feel or anything like that. The production is packed with bits of instrumental loops with subtle touches of electronics and beats, too, which in a way doesn't make these guys too unlike fellow Scandinavian weirdos Viagra Boys who, believe it or not, they've opened up for numerous times before.

But still, Boko Yout comes through with an entirely different set of influences, creating this super hooky combination of alt and art rock with dark, raw, fun production, spacey effects here and there, a lot of blown out drums and guitar riffs. In some ways, it does feel like a throwback to the 2000s, some of the noisier breakout indie bands and duos to come out of that time period, maybe The White Stripes with a bit of glam theatrics, or I would even say Bloc Party, for example, if you could remove their tight danceable post-punk rhythms and replace them with something a bit wilder and more loose.

Weirdly enough, I also find a lot of the vocal performances on this album to sound like the many less-than-successful attempts Kid Cudi has made at putting together a genuine rock album. Except what these guys do here actually manages to sound visceral and thrilling like a rock album should.

Of course, we also have to talk about frontman Paul Adamah here, whose voice and storytelling are very much the core thread that pulls this pretty disparate tracklist together and gives each song here a sense of intrigue and some conceptual themes, too. He's also said to be performing, at least in part, in character on this album as one, Mr. Gusto, using this as a vehicle to explore themes of mental health and emotional anguish.

Paul is also clearly in touch with his family's cultural roots in Togo and Mozambique, respectively, and occasionally is able to work in nods to that in his lyrics or the music itself, be it in the group chants that paint the midpoint of the opening track, "VOLLEYBALL", or in the "SHIFT" interlude, where over these drum circle drums, we hear a sermon of sorts about needing to be delivered from the evil spirit of the Western hemisphere. But the main course of many of these tracks is pretty much still it's driving riffs, its standout choruses, and Paul's super expressive vocal performances.

The track "BOYFRIEND" is also a standout to my ears, a song who's progressively deflating vocal harmonies. I feel like something off of a Donna Summer song, but if you could make it work in a garage rock context. Really, the whole first leg of this album is a barn burner; just one bop after the next.

But then as we move into the second half, the waters get a little bit choppier. The band starts to lean more into ballads, slow burners, more low-key moments. While this does open up the themes around therapy and internal emotional work, mental health a bit more, the performances aren't nearly as punchy. And while the very raw, simplistic production on the first half of the album does make many of these faster, more aggressive tracks go over well.

During the album's quieter moments, there is a lack of color and nuance there, instrumentally, to match the feelings of the songs, even with the closing track, whose whole first leg is very much giving Radiohead In Rainbows type vibes. But it's falling short due to how just bare it sounds and its lack of mystifying layers.

So yeah, the will is most definitely there, but the execution isn't quite. Still, even though things do drop off a bit, there isn't a single song in the second half that isn't at the very least respectable. And I feel like the band wanting to have a versatile tracklist that has a bit of a progression to it, I mean, that's a sign of things moving in the right direction, even if somehow things did fall a little bit short. I mean, I feel like the songwriting, the vocal performances, a lot of the guitar tones and riffs, as well as these gestures toward a grander, more conceptual idea, thematic direction, these are all great signs for an up and coming band.

Clearly, these guys are creative, they're vibrant, they're ambitious. They just couldn't make every single one of their aspirations and dreams come true on a first album. So even if there are some somewhat underwhelming moments on this record here and there, it's still a very impressive debut from a band that sounds like they're worth rooting for, which is why I'm feeling a decent to strong seven on this album.

Anthony Fantano, Boko Yout, forever.