Album Review: Calvin Harris - 18 Months

Calvin Harris
18 Months
Rating: Meh

Let's just cut to the chase here. Calvin Harris is a really good DJ/producer who is very of the moment, and knows what is popular and how to make it work. His new album 18 Months is basically the culmination of the last two years for him, a victory lap if you will, and is likely to be a smash hit. Taken apart, and viewed individually, there are a lot of great singles on here that will crowd dance floors, sell records, and bum rush radio programmers. But as a whole, this record is a completely and utter mess. Harris focuses too much on what popular singer to collaborate with and less on the actual tracks, making the majority of 18 Months very similar sounding and completely unadventurous, and also linking these tracks with the laziest and most pointless instrumentals every committed to tape. It is definitely a record to pick apart piecemeal and glean the best tracks from all the chaff.

The good news first, 18 Months has some great singles on it. Aside from pointlessly including the Rihanna track "We Found Love" which has been out forever, the record has a fun, dubstep influenced track with Dutch DJ/prodcuer Nicky Romero, "Iron,"



the furiously building electro workout "I Need Your Love" with Ellie Goulding,



dreamy synth workout "Sweet Nothing" which finally finds a way to put Florence Welch's voice to good use,



and a deliriously ebullient house jam "Thinking About You" with singer Ayah Marar.



But when you figure out that Harris basically follows the same pattern throughout each track, the overload of similar beats and synth hooks gets overwhelming. It becomes a simple formula of (popular singer of the day) + (press presets) = watch money roll into the bank. The tracks that blur together in this pattern are "Bounce" with Kelis, "We'll Be Coming Back" featuring Example, and "Let's Go" with Ne-Yo; each one could have been interchanged with each other and there wouldn't be much of a noticeable difference.

Also, Harris throws in a host of bizarre instrumental pieces that have no real rhyme or reason other than to fill out space on the record. Opening with the strange "Green Valley" which is nothing more that synth whooshes underneath a vocal sample repeated ad nauseum, thumping Daft Punk retread "Mansion," and lazy funk workout "School." Even where Harris tries to expand his sound, the results are murky at best. Long form instrumental "Awooga" becomes awash in air raid siren keyboards that might sound great while rolling your ass off, but are just annoying on their own, and his collaboration with Dillon Francis and Dizzee Rascal, "Here 2 China," suffers the same fate of being more irritating than ingratiating.



I wanted to like this record because I think Harris is very talented, but he is just spinning his wheels here with 18 Months. It feels calculated to launch off the success of the Rihanna track, but provides few if any surprises. Harris has a distinctive voice of his own, which I wished he had used more often. By hiding behind his collaborators, he ends up becoming just another anonymous knob twiddler.

Rating Scale:

Chilfos: masterpiece; coolest thing I've heard in ages.

Woof Daddy: excellent; just a hair away from being a masterpiece.

Grrrr: very good; will definitely be considered for my top releases of the year.

Yeah Daddy Make Me Want It: good; definitely invites further listens and piques one's interest for more material.

Meh: not horrible, but certainly not great; could have either been polished, trimmed, or re-thought.

Jeez Lady: what the hell happened? Just plain bad. They should hang their heads in shame and be forced to listen to Lady Gaga ad nauseam as penance.

Tragicistani: so bad, armed villagers with pitchforks and torches should run the artist out of the country for inflicting this abomination on the human race.