American Pleasure Club // A Whole F*cking Lifetime of This

American Pleasure Club

A Whole F*cking Lifetime of This

Run For Cover Records

4/5 Stars

Distancing himself from his past moniker, Teen Suicide, DIY figurehead Sam Ray claims to have grown up "with privilege and publicly on social media," recognizing missteps in his words and attitudes as a young 20-something. Now, with a new name and prerogative following 2016's bombastic It's The Big Joyous Celebration, Let's Stir the Honeypot, Ray dedicates all 36 minutes of A Whole F*cking Lifetime of this to creating something concise, (mostly) cohesive and above all, stunning. Ray has always had a knack for melody, even if his most abstract experiments had a way of hiding it, and that shines through in this album's straightforward songwriting (despite shapeshifting between tracks). Take the album's first five songs; following a lo-fi introduction, we are treated to emo power-pop ("this is heaven & id die for it), an acoustic number ("all the lonely nights in your life") and a Frank Ocean-sampling electronic experiment ("lets move to the desert") all within the span of 14 minutes. Somewhere between a defining statement and a new beginning, A Whole F*cking Lifetime of This reflects the aesthetic and heart of a new generation of songwriters.
— Aaron Mook