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Sep 16, 2016 Web Exclusive By Kyle Mullin

There finally comes a moment in Frank Ocean’s Endless, at about the 18-minute mark, when the entire affair finally isn’t completely dull. At long last the characters in the California musician’s visual album begin painting the boxes that we just spent a dozen minutes watching them saw and piece together the boards for. Shot in stark black and white, and with a presumably digital effect that renders the three shop workers mostly blank black and unrecognizable, the visual album’s first third consists of footage of that aforementioned plodding construction while mostly subdued, sometimes ambient music serves as the soundtrack.

When the workers step into another room, suit up, and begin spray painting the boxes, the music takes on a more soothing, droning, electronic quality with distinctly ripping synths and chirping, muted background vocals. In short: the music finally becomes strong enough to make these unimaginably boring visuals watchable. Sadly that beautifully soundtracked spray painting sequence ends all too soon, and we’re back to Ocean’s earnest crooning and gentle R&B rhythms, which would have been pleasant enough on a conventional album, but aren’t strong enough to eclipse the visuals like they did in the spray painting scene. The rest of Endless is instead like watching paint dry, especially in the final moment when we view the trio stack the boxes, only for there to be no visual payoff. None. No plot twist or well earned eye-popping finale to reward our patience. I won’t spoil that subpar ending for you, but suffice to say Endless lives up to its name in every wrong sense of the word. (www.boysdontcry.co)

Author rating: 4/10