Search the Community

The man. The myth. The legend. The man who has turned partying into a motivational topic and a musical philosophy, and the man who decided to go to the Gathering of Juggalos purely to fuck with Juggalos. Andrew WK has a new full album out. His first one in technically 8 years, but really his first big, focused "Andrew WK" project in about 15 years. Close Calls is a weird project with a few smatterings of Andrew here and there, 55 Cadillac was an instrumental, jazzy piano album, and his Japanese offerings are just a bit... bizarre, to say the least. I'd consider The Wolf to be the last time Andrew WK was noticeably Andrew WK for a whole album. Anyway. You're Not Alone. As you can probably guess from my title and the fact that I acknowledge that he's done something other than I Get Wet(And specifically Party Hard), I'm a pretty big Andrew WK fan. I Get Wet is one of my favorite albums and one of my favorite songs. So I've been looking forward to this for quite some time. And what better way to share my love and feelings than with a review! I figure I'll break this down song-by-song, and give a review of the album as a whole. I'm going to try to keep it simple. As much as I'd like to break it down on a technical level, I'm sure I'd just make an ass of myself and alienate that small handful of people who might actually care. Let's begin! ---------------------------------------- Track #1: The Power of Partying - Borderline just an instrumental piece. I don't even know if you can classify the automated voice repeating "Party party party. Party party party." over and over again vocals. Not the best song, but it gets bumped up as a hype piece for the rest of the album, as it's a song that slowly builds. It gets you ready for what's to come, and the actual composition is quite nice, but it's not much more than a hype track. 6/10 Track #2: Music is Worth Living For - The first single off of the album that got released months ago. As I've had time to listen to this one, I didn't have to do much to formulate my feelings. Between I Get Wet and The Wolf as the sort of "Andrew WK dichotomy"(I Get Wet being basically the fast hard rock/borderline metal sound that made him famous, and The Wolf being the more anthemic, motivational sound he's been playing with ever since that album), this falls more along the lines of The Wolf. Andrew's known for his gruff baritone voice, but he hits some really high notes on this song, which is more or less just a love letter to music, which is nice that he has these feelings after so many legal issues that kept him from really making music he wanted to. It's the proper start to the album, and it feels damn good to belt out to. One of those songs that you really want to sing in the shower and makes you want to listen to the album all over again. 9/10 Track #3: Ever Again - The second single off of the album that got released last month. This song is squarely in between the I Get Wet and The Wolf sounds. It borrows the main hook from one of his Japanese tracks(And really one of the only Japanese tracks really worth listening to), Everybody's Raging. The first time I heard this track, I thought "Hey, that's kinda lazy", but then I remembered that a very, very small portion of people knew about his Japanese works, and he builds a completely different song around the same backbone. It makes a curious contrast with Everybody's Raging, which is just a song about getting absolutely wasted and looking for burgers. Andrew instead takes Ever Again, and changes the message to "Everybody can change, no matter how shitty things get, they can get better", and seems to use a lot of his personal experiences to sell it. Very fun song, and continues to amp things up. 8.5/10 Track #4: I Don't Know Anything - And following this pattern, here we get the first, proper I Get Wet-style song from this album. It's akin to It's Time To Party. Full-bore insanity and absolute energy. And just like quite a few songs from I Get Wet, it follows the message of not really knowing much. But here, nearly 20 years later, Andrew adds on something that was sorely missing from that message that carried on through quite a few of the songs off that album. Rather than just being a declaration that he doesn't know anything or that he's stupid, he adds on the sentiment that "It's okay". It's okay to not know the answers. Though he does add on the typical Andrew WK comedic hyperbole when listing things off("I don't know the law/Or how to disobey/Or how to keep it cool/Or how to hit the hay"), it does feel like he's matured and has turned this into something a bit more positive. "I don't know the Christ/Or how to pray/How to face the world/Can't even face the day/That's alright/That's okay" is a noticeably more positive/ponderous spin on things. 8/10 Track #5: The Feeling of Being Alive - The first "Interlude" of the album. Throughout the album, Andrew takes some time to channel his experience as a motivational speaker. This one seems to directly address and explain the message of the last song, but in a more down to earth, personal way. Free of the bombast, Andrew just takes a minute to explain that feeling like something's wrong, or that you're cornered and don't know what to do, is just something humans go through. Something that he goes through, and that it's just a part of existing, and a challenge that has to be overcome. I'm probably gonna refrain from giving these interludes a rating, simply because it seems off to rate them. Track #6: Party Mindset - And following his first motivational interlude is a song about the subject that he's probably spoken the most of in his speeches. He's just explaining what his party philosophy is. It's just going over that you don't need to be somewhere fun, or with a bunch of fun people, to just escape with yourself and have some fun on your own. And if you stick with it, you can just be party all the time. Party zen, in a sense. Oddly enough, as you might not expect, this is a very subdued, chill song in tone. He's had this kind of song ever since I Get Wet, where he uses a slower song to convey the same messages of his over the top, hard hitting songs. But here, it feels probably the most fleshed out. It always felt like his other "slower" songs were missing something. Not the speed. It always kind of felt like they were a bit less rounded, and not quite as full. This feels like a proper Andrew WK song, just slower. 8/10 Track #7: The Party Never Dies - Unfortunately, here comes the first slump of the album. Again, despite I Get Wet being one of my albums, and also really liking The Wolf, Andrew always has these songs on his albums. They're just kind of dull, and really hard to grasp. On both a musical and a lyrical level. I've tried to break down and explain every song up to this point, but this is the one where I think I'm lost. I think he's basically personifying partying? It's tough to really get a grasp on, and the instrumentals are a bit repetitive. It interrupts the flow of the album, and I'll probably exclude it from the following listens to this album. 5/10 Track #8: Give Up On You - FORTUNATELY, it picks right back up with one of the highlights of the album. If you're the type of person who only listened to I Get Wet and only wants that, I don't think you'll get much here. This is another slow, anthemic piece. I'd go one step further and call it straight up "victorious". It's got a very classic, arena-rock-y vibe with the instrumentals, but Andrew's vocals just carry this to another level. There this great... organ? I think it's an organ. There's this great organ melody that carries the chorus, and Andrew's vocals compliment it so well. It's just a victorious(There's that word again) song about not giving up on somebody, and loving them completely, being their friend who's there for them... Now that I think about it, the song and lyrics are EERILY similar to a famous Rick Astley song that won't be named by name. The song title is about 2 words off from being that song, and now that I think about this song, I think it might be an ingenious spin on Rick Rolling. I'M NOT GOING TO LET THIS RUIN THIS WONDERFUL, GLORIOUS SONG. 9/10 Track #9: Keep On Going - Of all the songs on this album, I think this might be the one that I know how to feel about the least. It's basically the inverse message of Give Up On You. Rather than being a friend to somebody, it's about going off on your own, leaving everyone who has been hurting you behind, and becoming a star. This song has some very nice moments, but it shifts gears all over the place, and just about when you're comfortably in 3rd gear, it shifts and suddenly you're adjusting again abruptly. I don't know if any of the pieces are bad, I think most are quite good, actually. I just don't know if they completely gel together. 6.5/10, I think. Track #10: In Your Darkest Moments - As much as I would like to hear an Andrew WK song with this title, it's another motivational interlude. Andrew continues the message that's been progressing through the album. Instead of not knowing what to do, now it's about not letting yourself defeat yourself again, and using the hardships you've overcome to motivate yourself to continue overcoming hardships, and how rewarding it is. The good and the bad in life are why we live. Track #11: The Devil's On Your Side - Oh. Well I guess I didn't have to wait long for an Andrew WK song with a title like this. This is a fun one in concept. The preceding motivational interlude was about how the bad is ultimately "Good" because we can't feel good without overcoming something bad. So he takes the concept and makes a song about it. Basically about how accepting your demons will make your life more fun. You're constantly thinking about them, so why let them have power over you? Might as well accept them with the angels. Another soaring anthem, though this one's not quite as fun or exciting as Give Up On You or Party Mindset. Still solid, but not the strongest the album has to offer. 7/10 Track #12: Break the Curse - Definitely the most "out there" track on the album. It starts out with a classic synth vibe to it, and from there, it ping-pongs between this dark, downtrodden synth/rock tone, proclaiming pretty negative(For this album) things like "Look who put a curse on you/Look who played a trick on you", and is then immediately followed by Andrew's soaring vocals and the arena-y rock instrumentals with "A curse so bad it cursed me, too/A trick so good it tricked me, too". It's very rhythmic and kind of hypnotic. It's a fun one, and I like the idea behind it, but it's 6 minutes too long, and it only goes so far before it gets a bit repetitive. Though the back portion of the song has some sweet guitar riffs and keyboard flourishes, though that segment also goes on a bit too long. 7.5/10 Track #13: Total Freedom - And here we go. Probably my favorite track off of this album. Much like Give Up on You, it's hard to describe this as anything but "Victorious". I could say "Epic", but that word still has too much stink on it. It'll need to be another two or three decades before I feel comfortable using that to describe anything. This song has a much more contemplative feeling to it. There's no absolute message or some uplifting message much like most of the album. The lyrics are all in past-tense. "We had total freedom/We didn't care at all/About time going fast/Or if we could get ahead/Or if we would miss the past". There are many songs like this, but none of them feel as open to interpretation as this one. I could probably go through one of my Spotify playlists and find a dozen songs about people talking about how good times used to be, or how many mistakes they made in the past, but none that just leave the statements open. Andrew never says anything about the past. He just says all the things he had, and doesn't say if he misses them, if he wants to relive them, or anything. Which is really interesting to me. This song is conceptually similar to Break the Curse, in that it shifts tones between somber and reflective and a victorious chorus, but this one transitions between the tones MUCH more confidently and smoothly. It makes for a really, really engaging listen. And as my favorite song off the album, I'll drop a link. I still don't know how this would stack up to my absolute favorite Andrew WK songs, but I certainly feel that it'd be up there with something like The End of Our Lives, which is JUST below We Want Fun, She Is Beautiful and I Get Wet. So I guess it'd be like a top 5 AWK song. 9.5/10 Track #14: Beyond Oblivion - I actually really like when AWK puts his piano playing front and center as part of an instrumental piece. As much as I wasn't big on 55 Cadillac, this hits a sweet spot for me. Especially in the context of the album. There are only two tracks left, with one of them being another motivational interlude. This makes Beyond Oblivion the penultimate song of the album, and it runs the gamut of tones heard throughout it. It's a really, really good wind-down song. It's difficult to say if I'd prefer it on its own compared to its placement on the album, but I do really like the composition. 8/10 Track #15: Confusion and Clarity - The final motivational interlude. This one closes out the album with the message that the first proper track of the album, Music Is Worth Living For, opens up with. While Music Is Worth Living For conveys its message in the title, this interlude encourages you to find anything that you find that makes your life worth living. Track #16: You're Not Alone - The title track. It's weird. This definitely has a triumphant, victorious message. It basically says that even though this album is over, that the positive messages aren't over, and that you can take everything in the album with you towards whatever comes next for you. It absolutely conveys, lyrically, EVERYTHING that this album was trying to accomplish. But it lacks the tone of Give Up On You and Total Freedom. Not saying this song isn't over the top in the ways that AWK is known for. But those songs are like 12/10 on intensity, whereas this is about a 10. It's still far and above what most artists could even hope to reach, but it's not the height of AWK's sound in his entire discography, or even this album. It also kind of peters out near the end. But this is still a solid track, and it's a fantastic cap on the album. It just feels a little limp compared to what came before. 7.5/10 ---------------------------------------- There's my song-by-song breakdown. One thing I probably mentioned in a few of those song reviews is how the placements of the songs feel in relationship to the album. I'm still struggling to decide how I'll rate the album as a whole. You can't just add up all the song scores and then divide it by the number of tracks in the album. An album can absolutely be more than the sum of its parts. But as it stands right now and how I feel, this song absolutely has a good chunk of great, fun songs on it. I hope Andrew's next album has a bit more edge and his vocals are a bit more growly than they are here. This one captures more of The Wolf than I Get Wet, and as much as I like this album... I am much more a fan of I Get Wet. The fun, mindless party music is just more of what I want out of music. As great as the songs are, the constant soaring, triumphant anthems are a bit more tiring by nature. I'm not a huge fan of 80s arena rock for this reason, even though I think Andrew does it better and in a less cornball-y way. He's a lot more self-aware than a lot of the classics, and that always got in the way of my enjoyment of that kind of music. ANYWHO, tl:dr, the album's pretty good, go listen.