ALEX GILLIES
GRAPHIC DESIGNER
JACKSON POLLARD
STAFF WRITER
9/25/2023
Bakar makes indie music cool, there’s no doubt about it. His third studio album “Halo” continues the classic, young life storytelling theme he has seemed to perfect over the years. He projects feelings of belonging and regretful choices with some of the most beautiful instrumentals and background voice tracks. You cannot listen to a piece of work from Bakar that doesn’t make you reminisce, dance, cry or all of the above. The streak of such colorful and relatable storytelling surely does not end with Halo.
The opening tracks “OneInOneOut” and “Alive!” set the tone of the album immediately, a story of a woman he refuses to lose from his own mistakes, but questioning whether or not she’s worth all the effort. Building on his imperfection and love for this woman, he strives to do better and connect with her with the wisdom he’s gained throughout the relationship and life.
Then we take a turn, life starts to truly hit and he sees her flaws within himself. Whether drug problems, infidelity or immaturity, there are so many things they’ve both done wrong. Though they may have some problems, the love is still there. He can see she’s hurting and not taking care of herself, and it’s hurting him too. It’s all part of their story in the third and fourth songs titled “Facts_Situations” and “All Night.”
Transitioning to the back end of the album, you can feel the desperation and hopelessness that comes with having to disconnect from something or someone you want nothing but the best for. The dejection of feelings from past experiences and the best times with that person utterly breaks a person and it’s displayed perfectly in the song “Hate the Sun”. The slower, low-energy vibe of this song feels like everything’s over. It feels like the genuine end of anything you should care about.
The final two songs on the album force you to resecure yourself. “Invisible” and “To Open My Heart” reignite a fire you didn’t remember you had, they catapult you out of that endless misery we all get stuck in on occasion. You cannot hide from the sadness or regret, but you can embrace it. You can embrace the struggle of a bad situation and grow from it. You can open your heart to that growth and be the brightest, most visible version of yourself there is.
“Halo” ends with a new release version of one of Bakar’s most popular songs “Hell N Back.” A whole story in itself, this version of this song may be my favorite piece of music at the moment. A beautiful account of finding a person at a time you both needed more and had no idea. You had gone all the way to the ends of the Earth trying to find peace and love and thought you had found everything. Then this person shows up and you realize they were the everything you were looking for the whole time. They are your drug, your air, your sun, your comfort and your absolute everything.
I fully adore this album and find the ending track with Summer Walker’s feature to be such a great complementary part to bring everything together. It simply sounds so good. Any person with experience in relationships will be able to connect to this album and Bakar’s music in some shape or form. Nothing is perfect and we all make mistakes. We put people on pedestals and we knock them off later as if they never deserved to be there in the first place. With teary eyes, pure anger, complete realism or blinding love, we make choices about love that we will have to address later. “Halo” is all about those choices and can make any choice sound like the most delightful song you have ever heard.
