Like nostalgia, Dawn FM makes you feel indefinably pleasant rather than excites you ★★★☆☆

And then there was a completely unannounced new album from one of the biggest pop stars of the moment. Dawn FM is a collection of songs from a fictional radio station in purgatory. The Weeknd, the pseudonym of Abel Tesfaye, imagined waiting in Limbo as being stuck in a tunnel. The light is then the heaven that beckons. On your way to damnation or exaltation you can listen to the Tesfaye’s radio station with actor Jim Carrey as the DJ.

That dualism of purgatory is only reflected in Tesfaye’s attitude to relationships, in which cynicism and romanticism constantly alternate. The music is consistently and consciously stylized after eighties synth pop, somewhere between The Human League and Giorgio Moroder. the best song, Sacrifice, draws from the same vintage vein as Daft Punk, and is a powerful blend of borrowed nostalgia and a light dance floor buzz. the ballad Out Of Time, with Tesfaye’s velvety high-pitched vocals, could have just been a Michael Jackson ballad. They are the highlights of a collection of songs that, like nostalgia, make you feel indefinably pleasant rather than excite you.