Give or Take — Giveon |Album Review
R&B’s man of the hour intends to be here for a while, and his debut album is proof of that.
I have always believed that an album should be a cohesive body of work. This cohesion is usually created with some narrative consistency à la Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp A butterfly — an album that gradually builds a poem through each song — or even a consistent sound signature for which the album can be known. The state of the music industry, however, with the prominence of streaming and the increasingly cutthroat nature of the business, has meant an increasing desire from artists (and labels) just to produce hit songs. A commitment to proper storytelling in an album can be a commercial mistake, and many albums are a mishmash of random songs in the pursuit of the next hit song. This makes albums like GIVĒON’s Give or Take something to cherish.
As an artist, Giveon Dezmann Evans — known by the stylized mononym GIVĒON — has shown his consistent desire to create music that takes listeners on a journey. Emotional, intense, and sometimes heart-breaking journeys effectively immerse the listener into them; this album does exactly that.
Carrying over themes from the EP When All Is Said and Done…Take Time that he released last year, Give or Take speaks on heartbreak and regret, but in the interest of growth, it also explores maturity, empathy, and finding oneself. These themes are intertwined with GIVĒON’s personal story, one that sees him suffer heartbreak, fail to properly handle it, break the hearts of others, yearn for love, gain it and then lose it again. In just a shade over 45 minutes, buoyed by GIVĒON’s superior vocal performances and some silky instrumentals, Give or Take comes together as a brilliant piece of work.
Opening track, “Let Me Go” starts us at the end — the end of a relationship that gives the context upon which the rest of the album is built. It is a relationship GIVĒON is willing to fight for but as he sings, “Decide if I am worth the time I caused you / Let me know or let me go” he is not sure that his partner is strapped in for the long haul. The uncertainty is what triggers a re-evaluation of the relationship and, eventually, its demise. Splits like this tend to have a carry-over effect, and the next song, “Scarred,” illustrates this perfectly. Unable to properly process the hurt from a previous relationship, GIVĒON finds himself rejecting the affections of a love interest as he is “broken. Numb to all of your emotion /My last love was cold / So now, I gotta be the coldest”
Attempting to work through the negative effects of a relationship gone bad while handling his newfound stardom, the next few songs see GIVĒON fall in love with an attractive face in the crowd at a show, realize this kind of love is an illusion, and then settle for a relationship of convenience.
By the time “Make You Mine” comes around, some healing has taken place, and GIVĒON finds himself “falling back into the romance of it all”. This song is GIVĒON’s intense plea to a love interest, asking, “What would it take, for real / To make you mine?” It is a completely opposite sequence of events to what occurred earlier in the story on “Scarred,” where he was found himself rejecting the advances of another.
The dates “dec 11th” and “jul 16th” have some significance to GIVĒON and leaning into the idea of telling a complete story, GIVĒON includes these events and their dates as a way that displays the reality of the journey we are taking. As much as a fictitious story can have a strong effect on people, the knowledge that these things actually happened to another person adds some extra weight to these stories. As he noted in an interview with Apple Music, “I really wanted to give people a look behind the curtains of a 26-year-old man growing up today.” Due to his commitment to bringing these lived experiences to life over the course of this album, the smoothness of narrative you would get from a less grounded story is not present.
The story bounces forward and backwards on itself as life does at times — a quirk that becomes more enjoyable as you get more familiar with these songs.
The lead single for the album, “For Tonight,” sees GIVĒON return more to his comfort zone. A smooth piano grounds the faster-paced percussion as we are told a tale of forbidden love. The sounds on this track belie a situation that is not as beautiful, a relationship that should not be had, and one ultimately that does not last. “There’s no such thing as a perfect relationship / Because there’s no such thing as perfect people / So just learn from it and move forward”, the outro on “Lost Me” is one of the many appearances GIVĒON’s mother has on this project. GIVĒON has been vocal about the impact his mother had on his musical pursuits and has been intentional with how he involves her in his music, a constant theme that can be found in most of his work. Here she provides words of wisdom to her hurting son, words that serve as a seamless bridge to the next song.
“Lie Again” embodies the idea that ignorance is bliss, and, on the song, our protagonist is actually asking to be lied to. A desperate attempt to stay in the dark and ignore the realities of a romantic situation to remain happy. The song leaves a lot of air space with some unassuming guitar riffs providing just enough support for a supreme vocal performance from the Long Beach native.
GIVĒON’s distinct baritone is probably his greatest musical strength, and with a voice like that, it would make sense to create as much room for it to be showcased. This was a feature of his last work, When All Is Said and Done…Take Time. Instrumentals were more spacious, less cluttered, and chaotic, this created the perfect environment for his unique vocals to excel. On this project, however, the singer wanted a sound that was “elevated, bigger, and more cinematic”. Grand ambitions are admirable and show the growth he wants to undergo with his music.
On “Scarred,” an active violin stirs up the song, giving some extra spice to a great track. “Tryna Be” had fascinating production, which produced several fun moments across the track, and “Another Heartbreak” had a sprinkling of electronic influence, creating an atmosphere slightly different from most of his songs.
Despite this, I believe the project fell short of a grand, cinematic masterpiece. He experimented with the pacing on many of the songs, but a significant number of them still fell into his comfort zone of smooth ballads. This is hardly the end of the world. It would have been impressive for GIVĒON to remould his sound on his first full-length album, and the signs of experimentation bode well for future projects, but a greater reach outside his comfort zone would have been good for the album.
Over the course of about 41 minutes to this point, GIVĒON has learned, forgotten, and then relearned the pain and hurt of heartbreak. “At Least We Tried” was a mature — even if reluctant — acknowledgment of the inherent risk in pursuing love and an acceptance that things won’t always work out. To close out the album, “Unholy Matrimony” returns GIVĒON to his beloved piano ballad, a familiar note upon which to close a brilliant body of work. The final verse on this encapsulates the other side of romance — just as the whole song is. The intense despair of the love that did not last.
Our love story’s ended way too soon
You’re supposed to love me to the tomb
Hardly stood a chance to tell the truth
Speak, baby, tell me that you knew
We came all this way to lose
There has been some growth on this album, and GIVĒON deserves plaudits for that. It may seem derivative to commend the songwriting of someone whose subject matter is not very diverse, but the experiences of love and heartbreak are always intense and deeply personal, and as a result, there will always be more perspectives left to be explored.
As he noted, “I am just trying to tell the infinite amount of experiences of heartbreak that can occur, 15 songs at a time.”
