Hi, everyone. Eathony Cattano here, the internet's busiest music nerd. It's time for a review of the new Fred again.. album, Ten Days.

Yep, here we have the newest full-length LP from Electronic Dance Music's latest It Boy, Fred Gibson, a. K. A. Fred again.., a UK producer and Grammy winner, whose meteoric rise to fame in the past couple of years has led to some really interesting collaborations. I mean, if Fred again.. has proven to be anything in the last couple of years, it's certainly versatile, as he has made very successful and enjoyable tracks with the likes of Lil Yachty, Skrillex, a whole album with Brian frickin Eno, also Romy, Swedish House Mafia. I mean, the collaborations are piling up.

Now, mind you, in my opinion, a lot of Fred's output up until this point, more or less, I have found to be like a mixed bag. But still, it is impressive that one man can do so much and that he conjured the buzz that he did off of these very DIY dance records that are very contemplative, moody, sometimes diaristic, really like a reflection of his life in a way, which still seems to be the goal on this latest album over here, Ten Days.

But it is important to note that while Fred may be operating creatively much the same way, his surroundings, since he was producing his last Actual Life album in 2022, have very much changed. And he seems to be taking full advantage of those surroundings changing with a star-studded feature list that includes everyone from Anderson Paak to Sampa to Skrillex. But I wouldn't say Fred's commercial success and the connections he's made has really changed the way he operates in terms of production, creating music generally. I mean, it's not like he just brought on a bunch of inappropriate, weird, out of left field, super commercially viable appearances and guests on this LP. There are many more crossovers that, in my opinion, are more unexpected.

It's clear that the involvement of various people on this album, it's driven more by Fred's passion for their talents and their music than anything else. He's still not afraid to deliver things with a raw presentation, too, and even make sure to maintain the idea that this album is a product of my everyday life and experiences with ten interludes to match the ten main core tracks on the album of what sounds like just snippets of random goings on and interactions in his life.

But as true to Fred again.. as this entire project seems to be, it's all led to a listening experience that, personally, I found to be very disappointing and borderline disastrous on some tracks.

Before I get into why, though, I do want to stress that this album isn't all bad. "Adore You" featuring Nigerian singer and songwriter Obongjayar is one of the more refreshing crossovers and collaborations on the record. The track is feel good without being sickeningly sweet, and there's an awesome rhythmic breakdown around the bridge on the song, too, that goes over really well.

There's also "Glow" featuring Duskus, Four Tet, and Skrillex, which does start out a little bland, but the journey this track will take you on is easily the best on the entire record. In fact, I wish more tracks went above and beyond like this one. The rest of the album, though, in my view, is most definitely missing something, be it the various interludes across the record that don't really give the listener anything more than a sense of like, I guess you had to be there.

There are also collaborations on this thing that I think feel like they could have been given a bit more care or texture or detail or attention, flavor, really anything to prevent them from feeling like just a generic dressing room dance pop, namely the tracks "Peace U Need" as well as "Ten".

There's also "Where Will I Be" featuring Emmylou Harris, which is essentially a redo of an Emmylou track from the '90s. But the context they're presented in on this new version of the song, it's just unflattering. Emmylou's vocal sounds so hollowed out and shrill, plus the pumping synthesizer layers going off in the background, I don't think are the best backdrop for her very folksy singing style. Not to mention the progression of the song is terrible. It feels like it's building up toward a payoff that never really comes.

There's also "Just Stand There", which features these spoken word passages from Irish singer and songwriter Soak, which I think makes for the most tedious song on this entire album. This has nothing to do with Soak, though, mind you. Their appearance here isn't really a reflection of their talents or writing abilities in any way, or even the validity of this retelling of a romantic interaction that is being explained in this spoken word bit. It's really more what Fred does with all of it, which to me is not much. Really just throwing this minimalist electro piano piece under it. It just sounds like if you tried to create a soundtrack piece for a voice note that a friend left on your phone, not much more than that.

There's also "Fearless", which is an attempt at a dramatic synth pop piece that has vocals from Sampha on it. But despite my high hopes for this track, it very much falls short as well, not only because the recording and EQ on Sampha's voice. Also, again, just sounds so tinny and thin, but the structure gives very little teeth to this song. Clearly, Fred needs to work on his songwriting chops a bit here. But also on top of it, he has the balls to sing on this song, sounding nowhere near Sampha's league vocally in the process. In fact, I would say there's little to no vocal chemistry on this song at all.

When later on the record, Fred goes on more of a solo vocal venture with "I Saw You", it just sounds like an unmemorable interlude from a Coldplay album. Like, really, what's the appeal here? Really a question I keep asking myself as this album continues on.

As the closing track is the definition of bland, I feel like we've already been here with a Moby record or two. Then there's also "Places to Be" featuring Anderson .Paak as well as Chika, which is handily one of the better songs here in terms of groove and just generally feeling engaging. But even this track comes across like the music bed for a tourism ad.

Yeah, on this record, I feel like one thing and one thing only has been made clear, and that's that Fred just makes music for himself and isn't desperate to go out of his way to impress anybody. Yeah, I feel like when that's basically your MO, the result is going to sometimes be a profoundly unimpressive music, which is why I'm feeling a decent to strong 3 on this thing.

Anthony Fantano. Fred again.. Forever.