The big theory that I'm pushing this week is that the Bando Stone and the New World film is fake. The trailer was released at the beginning of the summer, and there's been no set release date, the IMDB page is bare-bones, and the visuals look kinda off in some unexplainable way. Almost like... someone didn't feel like spending $80 million on a fake movie trailer? I've tried to google around, and I'm not the first person to speculate the veracity of this film's existence, but most of the speculation has been met with crickets and shrugs.
This is an album review, so I'll ask: does this matter? It matters only if you're the type of person who is likely to take a film soundtrack less seriously. I think I am one of those people. If this music was made for a movie, then I'd be more willing to dismiss it. If it's a soundtrack, that means that listening to Bando Stone and the New World (the album) is only getting half the story. But I'm proposing that it ain't like that, because the film doesn't exist and will never exist. And so, instead of a film soundtrack, this becomes a fully-formed album, attached to a great bit. "Fake movie trailer" is a bit I can get behind. It's a great bit. I love jokes that involve full commitment. There's describing your album as a "film soundtrack" to a film that doesn't exist, and then there's pretending that movie does exist, and making a whole goddamn trailer to convince everyone that the movie does exist, even though: it doesn't exist. Good stuff.
Donald Glover's career feels like one littered with these sort of big swings that I find so easy to appreciate. I feel a kinship there. Obviously he is operating at an exponentially larger scale, I'm not seriously comparing it. But I do feel like this blog operates in the same way—take big swings, accept that most of those swings are going to result in misses, acknowledge that the misses are worth it for those rare moments when the big swings connect and result in a home run. Atlanta was slightly overrated, but you cannot deny that Glover had the balls to follow the weird, and the show is chock full of moments inspiring awe. The music is the same way. I dunno, how do you feel about the big cultural flashpoint of "This Is America"? I think the music was extremely mediocre but that the visuals were stunning, and it felt like its existence was justified due to how big of a swing it was.
Bando Stone and the New World (the album, though I shouldn't have to clarify this any longer) is built in the same way. There are a lot of terrible songs on here. There are also a few moments that blow me away. The combination of the two—plus the hilarious fake movie thing—make me feel like it was all worth it. Glover masters nothing, but he jacks every trade. By trying everything, he will by default succeed at a lot, and fail at a lot too. I just love the effort!
For every fucking embarrassment like "Talk My Shit" ("I'ma make a billi' like I'm Eilish / You can't see me flyin' 'cause it's private" is my vote for the worst lyric of the the decade so far, due to both content and delivery), there is a sublime faux-emo chorus like that of "Running Around" (despite the "fish sticks" lyric—there is a ballsy variance even within each song!). Something like jacking Khruangbin's tone wholesale for "Happy Survival" feels important but probably isn't. Something like the oddly compelling "Can You Feel Me" feels important and I actually really do think it is (even though it also sounds like something that Bleachers would attempt). The chorus of "Nobody gives a fuck!" is incredibly poignant, but the delivery is soaked in cringe; some of the pre-song "movie soundbites" feel designed to be cringe but end up being poignant accidentally. "Steps Beach" is pleasant but you know that it fits a little too comfortably in those Gen-Z algorithm playlists for "chill times" and, like, that's the point, to its detriment; "H3@RT$ W3RE M3@NT T0 F7¥" attempts to sound like Yeezus-era Kanye and manages to almost get there (helps that Donald Glover is not a nazi).
Going forward and backward on the tracklist to come up with those examples in the preceding paragraph, I was surprised to find that there were no songs that immediately inspired ire for me. There are obviously better songs and worse songs, but even the bad ones are intriguing in ways I can appreciate. It's a fascinating way to go about making music. For the record, I vastly prefer bad music that interests me over good music that bores me. So there's that, and then there's also the stone cold fact that Bando Stone and the New World isn't really even that bad! When it's good, it's good, and when it's bad, it's interesting. It's like the film trailer. It's not good, it's bad, but it's fake, so that means it's not bad anymore, it's just interesting.
Will I listen to Bando Stone and the New World all that often after this week? Probably not. But in the moment, I appreciated it. It demanded my attention. It was weird, it was off-putting, it was generally satisfactory. The world will eventually forget about the movie that was never meant to exist, but that's okay, because Donald Glover no doubt has some weird-ass bullshit just around the corner to demand our attention again.
GRADE: 3 pukes out of 5
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