Halsey - BADLANDS [Album Review]

With her striking teal hair and enigmatic aura, Halsey is distinctly different from your average singer, and her music reflects this originality. Unique, and with a lust for the alternative, her debut studio album, entitled Badlands, was bound to be an interesting adventure. Coming from an alternative route into music, her rise to prominence was largely due to the release of ‘Ghost’, a song she posted to SoundCloud that gained enough attention, that the record labels started knocking. And now, a debut EP (Room 93) and a couple of supporting tours later and we have arrived at the release of Badlands.

Sufficed to say that Badlands is a concept album, referring to the singer’s state of mind through metaphor as a “desolate and lonely place”, setting up expectations for what we can expect from the album’s content. It should come as no surprise that the singer has described her creation as an “angry female record”, which presents itself in the first atmospheric opening track, ‘Castle’, as she darkly states that she is “sick of all these people talking, sick of all this noise”. With vocals not dissimilar to that of Lana Del Rey, Lorde, BANKS or Marina Diamandis, Halsey’s (real name Ashley Frangipane) sound can come across quite imaginative and alluring. But perhaps what Halsey does best is inject a bit of her addictive persona into the tracks she creates; ‘Castle’ starts off with an intriguing plethora of alt beats only to overwhelm you with a chorus of choir music one minute in.

This is just a little extract from my review of Halsey's BADLANDS, hope you've enjoyed reading it. If you'd like to read the rest of the review, including the final verdict, then you can check it out, over at Concrete: http://www.concrete-online.co.uk/album-review-badlands/ 

Also, let me know what you think of BADLANDS in the comments, I always enjoy reading them. Thanks everyone for the support and for reading my blog (despite my extended absence over the past month!).