190 minutes of falsetto-laden nihilistic R&B.

I don't know if I can call this a concept album because it's really just a remixed/remastered compilation of three mixtapes that The Weeknd put out in 2012 (House of Balloons was released on March 21 2011, Thursday was released on August 18 2011, and Echoes of Silence was released on December 21 2011) with the addition of a few previously unreleased tracks, but it feels like a concept album to me. From start to finish there's a story going on that as listeners we're all just walking in on, like hearing hushed conversations from another room "in that two floor loft in the middle of the city" and sometimes you can get the feeling that maybe you're hearing too many things you shouldn't be hearing but you keep listening anyway.

It's a raw album, if you want to call it that, and some critics say that it's repetitious and needs some editing, but that's really the beauty of it. It's meticulous and not over-produced and feels tenderly handled-- there's a consistent and clawing tone that permeates through each track that will linger with you if you let it, and sometimes it's nice to let it.

I've listened to Trilogy dozens of times (the album came out in 2012 but I only started listening to it in 2016), some songs I've listened to over 200 times ("House of Balloons/Glass Table Girls," "Lonely Star" and "Montreal" are some that I play on loop), and it always feels fresh to me. I haven't gotten tired of eavesdropping on the bittersweet and sometimes perverse conversations of the hangers-on at the afterparty that comprises Trilogy, and with each new listen I still find something musically interesting that I didn't notice before. This is The Weeknd's finest work to date.