“Everyone’s like ‘What’s Lustropolis?’” After a brief pause for dramatic effect, and a slight nod of his head, as if to say “Here goes,” Odeal proceeds. “Everybody lives in Lustropolis. We all live in Lustropolis at some point in our lives. We’re just just trying to make it out.” In this video, posted days before the release of his latest EP, The Fall That Saved Us, Odeal explains Lustropolis, his 2024 project that also doubles as a metaphor for toxic romance. With its intricate world building, this clip is something of an early Christmas present for fans spellbound by the lustrous worlds Odeal conjures in his projects.
As he tells it, Lustropolis owes something to a fairytale romance gone wrong. “I thought things would last and that took me to my villain arc. Industry is dark, if you don’t find love before that sh*t, you’re lowkey cooked.” The Summer That Saved Me, the sequel to 2024’s Lustropolis, is a bright, effervescent Pop-R&B record. Here he eschews the chaos of Lustropolis for something close to but not quite catharsis.
In Miami, which opens The Summer That Saved Me, he affects a disarming tenderness, serenading his muse over guitar melodies that ebb and flow like a gentle evening breeze. “Hold me. Take me. Never release me,” he sings. His voice drips with palpable yearning. It almost feels like the consolidation of a fairy tale romance, but listen a little closer, and what you’ll find is the spectre of chaos bubbling beneath the illusion of calm. His lover is still in the throes of a previous heartbreak and constantly has to numb her pain with alcohol. More crucially their relationship exists in the hazy interstice between a friendship and a relationship—“situationship” is the word. “We stayed friends in Miami but we made love in Argentina,” he sings.
It’s little wonder that in The Fall That Saved Us, he’s back to the dark, gnarly universe of Lustropolis. But while the two projects share a mellow, brooding atmosphere suffused with the volatility of a topsy-turvy romance, they differ in one key aspect. Lustropolis feels like an elegy for a relationship at its tail end. We’ve all been here before, or as Odeal puts it: “we all live in Lustropolis at some point.” Both parties know the relationship is at its end. You know there’s no saving the situation, there’s no light at the end of the tunnel. But you still hold on—part nostalgia, part bind-faith—until the relationship ultimately implodes.
By contrast, in The Fall That Saved Us, streaking through the chaos—the lying, cheating, gaslighting—is a hope that’s hard to deny. You get the sense that Odeal and his muse are wending through a rough patch as opposed to performing the final rites for a moribund relationship. In Pretty Girls, a sultry ballad that calls to mind 80s R&B, Odeal invites us into his turbulent relationship. “We went from sex in the morning, to crashing out most days.” Later in the songs he pulls apart even more sordid parts of the relationship, singing about cheating and gaslighting his lover. He might seem a terrible lover, maybe their both terrible lovers, but what he really wants is his lover’s attention. “Act like you want me/ Prove it and show me/ If I’m being honest/ You got what the pretty girls want,” he pleases.
The Fall That Saved Us offers no easily resolved moral dilemmas and this is what supplies much of the project’s charm. In Molotov, my personal favorite, over a gorgeous bounce, he paints a picture of a situation with a dithering romantic interest. As he perceives the situation, he is not sure she wants to be with him, and for a moment he busies himself trying to convince her and prize open her true feelings. The irony is that he also seems emotionally unavailable. “Wanna love but I’m tired and exhausted/ I’m from Molotov, where the b*tches hella cold here,” he sings. Blame it on unresolved emotional baggage or anhedonia, but he’s not willing to offer the same grace he demands.
Immaculate songwriting is an indelible feature of every Odeal project, so much so that we sometimes take it for granted. And yet, he still finds ways to surprise us. Consider Wicked’s overture. Over gorgeous keys that evoke a visceral sense of wonder, he sings: “They say there's no rest for the wicked/ But you slept on me, baby/ You the wickedest/ If I had a dime for every time/ We'd be millionaires.” Whew!
In Night in the Sun, which featured a resplendent verse from Afrobeats frontman Wizkid, the project pulls close to something resembling catharsis. With its upbeat and chipper production, Nights In The Sun would fit perfectly within The Summer That Saved Me. “Nights in the sun/ You got me right where you want/ Tables are turning/ I found my person/ Bon la vida,” Odeal sings. Hearing him rhapsodize about breakfast in the mornings with his lover and finally finding respite from the turbulence of their relationship might lull you into a calm, but you’ll still find yourself wondering how long this calm will last.
