When your debut album receives rave reviews and is often lauded as one of the best of all time, producing further output can prove problematic. Some artists are able to one-up themselves and continue making fresh, exciting music for decades afterward, and some can’t. DJ Shadow falls into the latter camp. His 1996 debut “Endtroducing…..” received acclaim across the board upon release, and is still considered by many to be one of the decade’s greatest albums. But after his follow-up album was released to outstanding cries of “It’s good, but it’s no ‘Endtroducing…..’”, his output steeply declined in quality, with his next four albums all being varying shades of mediocre. “Action Adventure” does little to alleviate this pattern. The best thing about this album is its cover, and even that becomes somewhat laughable when one compares it to the banality of the music itself.
The opener, “Ozone Scraper” is an inoffensive enough synthwave track, released about a decade after the genre became played out. It feels like background music for some lousy phone game. “All In” is no more interesting. There are times when it seems like it might develop into something that is, but it never does. “Time & Space” is one of the better songs on the album, an admirable attempt at a 90’s chillout sound that, nevertheless, is too long for its own good.
“Craig, Ingels, & Wrightson”, named after three comic artists, is an uninspired attempt at IDM that I’m fairly certain just uses the default preset on whatever synth he used, while “Witches Vs. Warlocks” features a playful vocal loop getting repeatedly drowned out by a bland trap beat. “A Narrow Escape” is actually fairly enjoyable, with its electric piano line bringing to mind Daft Punk’s “Random Access Memories”. It’s hard to be too appreciative of the track though, as it’s followed by “You Played Me”, an attempt at a vaporwave song that utterly fails at producing any of the atmosphere that the genre is known for, leaving us with what amounts to a bad remix of an obscure pop song.
Fortunately, the next song, “Free For All”, is by far the best song on the album, and the only one I would recommend going out of your way to listen to. It successfully manages to blend rockabilly with trap, and at a scant 2 and a half minutes, doesn’t overstay its welcome. This cannot be said for “The Prophecy,” a five-minute-long track built around a bassline that sounds like something a teenager would throw together in FL Studio within an hour of buying it.
“Friend or Foe” is another synthwave track, and utterly unremarkable. “Fleeting Youth (An Audible Life)” is just as pretentious as the title would make you think and sounds like someone layered goofy synths over a guided meditation app. “Reflecting Pool” is another track that, while nothing to write home about, isn’t that bad. Although a little overlong, the dense, pulsing drums do a good enough job of keeping the song’s energy going.
The last two songs, “Forever Changed” and “She’s Evolving”, are bland, to the point that it begins to feel insulting. They’re both the same type of lifeless instrumental hip-hop that one would expect to hear in a McDonald’s commercial or an annoying vlogger’s travel montage. The fact that a record label of any size would be willing to put this out should enrage any number of unsigned musicians.
DJ Shadow is 51 years old and has been making music for the last 34 years. Listening to this album, one gets the deep impression that he has given up trying make to anything as good as “Endtroducing…..”, and just views music as a hobby at this point. In a way, there is something very admirable about that. Not that it makes the record any good.
4/10