Post Malone - Austin

Austin Richard Post spent nearly a decade as one of the biggest names in pop before making a record under his own first name, alone. No features, no guest verses, no one else on the mic. It is the only album in his catalog that can say that, and the choice tells you most of what you need to know about what he was after here.

The other headline is the guitar. Post picked one up while writing, taught himself to build songs around it, and ended up playing on every track. That reorients everything. The hip-hop and R&B scaffolding of his earlier records gives way to bright, jangling pop-rock: "Chemical" rides a nervy, propulsive hook, "Overdrive" runs sunny and lean at two and a half minutes, and "Mourning" pairs one of the album's catchiest melodies with lyrics about drinking through the grief. "Enough Is Enough" is more direct still, a plain-spoken accounting of his relationship with alcohol.

Recorded at Henson Studios in Los Angeles with Andrew Watt, Louis Bell, Max Martin, and Rami Yacoub, with Post himself producing throughout, the album trades armor for something considerably more exposed. Critics were broadly won over, and seventeen tracks in it holds up as the moment a stadium-filling hitmaker decided to just write songs.

This double-LP edition is pressed on forest green vinyl in a gatefold jacket via Mercury and Republic.