Andrew W.K. - You're Not Alone (Red/Sony, 2018)

In 2001, 17 years ago, Andrew W.K. released the absolute masterpiece known as I Get Wet. Two years later he released the lukewarmish The Wolf. Then things got real weird. Close Calls with Brick Walls followed three years later but only in Japan, as AWK was temporarily barred from releasing music in North America under his own name due to a recently-resolved but still hazy legal dispute involving Steev Mike and a dispute over the ownership of AWK's name, likeness, image, etc (don't go down that rabbit hole, I urge you). In the interim AWK released a J-pop cover album, a solo piano improvisation album, and an album of Gundam themes, along with some odds and ends here and there, but You're Not Alone is his first return to the party anthems of his first two albums. Sorta. How does it stack up to I Get Wet? Well it's almost twice as long, with about the same number of songs (there 3 spoken word motivational speeches dotted throughout the album), some tracks pushing into the 5-6 minute range. So, like Close Calls, things have gotten bloated, if not so much experimental. Remember "Don't Stop Living in the Red" off IGW? Every song on You're Not Alone tries to be that - piano-drive, anthemic, thunderous, slightly portentous and slower and kinda flat. There's such a sense of trying to make every song its own self-contained epic that hearing one after another after another becomes a slog. There's some bangers on here for sure - "Music is Worth Living For", "I Don't Know Anything", "The Party Never Dies", "Break the Curse" - but now everything has become a bit more leaden, a bit too serious. I'm glad AWK is "back" and doing his thing again but this doesn't hit the same highs.