Andy Shauf makes his way to the Bayou City at White Oak Music Hall, here is how he describs his latest "The Party".
The Party is the ANTI- (Arts & Crafts in Canada) full-length debut for this Canadian songwriter, who grew up in small-town Saskatchewan.
Awkward characters show up “Early to the Party,” and either reveal life-changing secrets (“To You”) or try their hardest to reveal nothing at all (“The Magician”). In “a city the size of a dinner plate,” everyone 
knew the guy who keeled over dead after smoking what he promised would be his last pack of cigarettes (“Alexander All Alone”). The girl dancing by herself, unselfconsciously, in the middle of the room, with the “Eyes of Them All” upon her. One moment you’re dancing with someone who bears an uncanny resemblance to your ex (“Martha Sways”), and later you start slagging your best friend as way of endearing yourself to his recently dumped ex (“Quite Like You”).
It all started for The Weeknd late 2010 when Abel Makkonen Tesfaye anonymously uploaded several songs to YouTube under the name "The Weeknd". The Canadian then released three nine-track mixtapes throughout 2011: House of Balloons, Thursday and Echoes of Silence, which many say were critically acclaimed. In 2012, he released a compilation album Trilogy, thirty tracks consisting of the remastered 
mixtapes and three additional songs. It was released under Republic Records and his own label XO.
The Weeknd from Scarborough, Ontario, now a district of Toronto is an the only child of Makkonen and Samra Tesfaye, who were Ethiopian migrants to Canada in the 1980s. He was raised in Scarborough, a multicultural neighborhood within the city. During his youth, his mother would work several jobs to support the family, often as a nurse and caterer, while also attending night school. His father later abandoned the family, prompting his maternal grandmother to take care for him. This allowed him to become fluent in Amharic, with the Semitic language acting as his first language. She would also take him to services at an Ethiopian Orthodox church.
The Weeknd's songs are "built around a fogged, crepuscular production",and feature slow tempos, rumbling bass, and forlorn echoes.
The Weeknd sings in a falsetto register, exhibiting an enticing tone. J. D. Considine finds his singing's "tremulous quality" similar to Michael Jackson, but writes that he eschews Jackson's "strong basis in the blues" for a more Arabic-influenced melisma. His music incorporates samples that are unconventional in R&B production, including punk and 
alternative rock.[98] Marc Hogan of Spin says that The Weeknd's samples tend "to draw from rock critic-approved sources, though generally ones that already share elements of his sexual menace", with samples of artists such as Beach House, Siouxsie and the Banshees and Aaliyah. The Weeknd worked mostly with producers Illangelo and Doc McKinney, whom Pitchfork Media's Ian Cohen credits with developing "a state-of-the-art R&B template" with The Weeknd. In concert, The Weeknd reappropriates his digitized productions with a suite-like arena rock aesthetic.
[This narrative is taken and edited from
Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia]