★★☆☆☆
If you didn’t know you were listening to the new album by the heralded Canadian figurehead of late-night transgression, you might mistake much of this for the soundtrack to a point-and-click mobile game from 2014.
The generic trap beats, processed vocals, syrupy melodies, sleazy tales of empty sexual encounters amid LA’s plastic surgery set . . . it all feels bleakly anodyne. And that’s when the Weeknd, aka Abel Tesfaye, isn’t aping Eighties synth-pop balladry on Save Your Tears and Hardest to Love.
Tesfaye’s gift for a punchy tune proves the album’s saving grace — the recent hit Blinding Lights is a corker — but if you are coming to this because of the praise and cultural significance that have been heaped on