Album Review: Conan Gray Fails to Elevate On ‘Found Heaven’

Conan Gray swung big with his third record, Found Heaven, introducing a Swedish production team and nostalgic ’80s flair. The Texan singer-songwriter’s grand experiment is definitely enticing, but feels like it’s still waiting to be “Found.”

Written by William Beachum

Conan Gray has never claimed to be polished. From the start of his YouTube career in the early 2010s, he has framed himself as a kid who tries his best, whether it be through his candlelit covers of indie classics, quirky cooking shows, or advice vlogs.

Gray released original songs and music videos to build on his initial brand, culminating in 2018’s Sunset Season. The five-song EP simmered with a delicate sentimentality for a time gone by while balancing Gray’s glass-half-empty worldview. Songs like “Crush Culture” and “Generation Why” question what Gray saw around him, creating a language for his pessimistic teenage audience to reflect about the world around them.

Officially graduating from his YouTube days, depressed teens flung Gray into the mainstream with the release of his debut album, Kid Krow, one week after the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. The confessional nature of singles “Maniac” and "Heather” lent itself well to popularity in a period of isolation, showcasing the vulnerability in his lyrics and emotional vocal range. Melodramatic second LP, Superache, almost exclusively included soaring odes to the same unrequited love pined after on Kid Krow tracks “Heather” and “Wish You Were Sober.” While incredibly consistent, this creative vision lacked variety in lyrical content and song structure, signaling a thematic and emotional stagnation. In an interview with the Zach Sang Show, Gray confessed, “I’ve spent most of my first albums doing the whisper pop thing and don’t get me wrong, I love it, it just felt like it was time for something new.” This sense of boredom drove the experimentation of his third record, Found Heaven.

Found Heaven is heavily — almost to the point of parody — influenced by the sounds and aesthetics of the ’80s. Gray told Paper Magazine that he grew up not listening to “secular music,” so when he recently discovered the music of a-ha, Queen, and David Bowie, he traveled to a new sonic world he couldn’t bring himself to leave. Along with Greg Kurstin, Swedish producer Max Martin, who has collaborated with the likes of Britney Spears and Taylor Swift, spearheaded Gray’s retro vision. Found Heaven marks Gray’s first album without producer Dan Nigro, famous for albums like Olivia Rodrigo’s GUTS. The new production team constructed an entirely new synthetic, retro vision for the singer and encouraged him to pursue sonic exploration, in turn creating an identity crisis for the Texas native.

“Found Heaven” grandly opens the album, boosted by swelling choirs and looming vocals. Gray resurrects the song with the weight of his voice while a harrowed instrumentals rise from the ashes. The lyrical content of the track is poetic, an atypical technique outside of the homey singer-songwriter’s nature. Moving away from lyrics like “Why would you ever kiss me,” the indie dream boy instead ominously croons lyrics “No God above us, can we repent this sin?” In the sonic ambiance of an abandoned retro arcade, Gray describes how he reassures a scared part of himself that “you’re no demon,” and he realigns focus because he “[can’t] be frightened now.” He dispenses messages that ring true while elevating his language to be more poetic and transforming his sonics to be more nostalgic. The title track offers a glimpse into an album that could have been: a poetic look into finding yourself through escapism.

“Never Ending Song” features a robotic vocal delivery, as Gray urges a lover to “make us stay forever” like a “Never Ending Song,” cheekily referencing the song’s cyclical nature. Structurally and lyrically, the song successfully conveys the feeling of wanting a lover to stay in a time warp and maintain the comfort of consistency. It’s incredibly polished. However, the lack of specificity in its lyrics and unenthusiastic vocal delivery (even if intentional) make the lead single feel like anyone could have written it. His signature shrieking, open, and weathered voice acts as a vessel for his curated loner personality that drove his initial popularity and eventual rise to fame. Sans the agility and rawness of that voice, fans lose the connection to the person they grew up alongside. Gray dampened what made his voice unique by reverting to song gimmicks and prioritization of stylization.

After the energetic yet forgetful “Fainted Love,” Gray explores a purposefully stoic vocal conveyance on “Lonely Dancers.” Gray describes a party where he meets a stranger whom he has to “dance with / So [he] doesn’t cry.” While a distanced vocal style could work for this casually destructive song, Gray doesn’t expand upon his own perspective of the conflict.The lack of direction leaves the audience wondering if they are supposed to revel in the situation’s problematic nature or feel guilty for its ramifications. The instrumentation also doesn't help its case, with its odd waltz-y quality lacking groove to push any sort of narrative forward. The excessive repetition of the simplistic synth pattern doesn’t contribute to the thematic vision, but rather rings in the listener’s ear until it numbs the emotion. The instrumentation fails to propel the song’s story forward, revealing a trend for the rest of Found Heaven.

“Alley Rose,” Gray’s favorite song on the record, shouts at its listener to rampage through the muddy waters of London with him on his one-year-long breakup journey. The indie starlet has some serious Elton John envy on this track, with his grand vocal style and cadence mimicking the British crooner’s performance on “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road.” While the drive of an electric guitar balanced by synthetic elements creates a dynamic framework for Gray to work with, his voice becomes muddled because of the direct vocal homage to the famous balladeer. It’s clear that Gray is hurting in this song, but the hurt belongs to someone else.

The greatest experimentation on the album, “Miss You,” acts as another panging reminder of what the project could have been. The anxiety and anguish of the former teen pop star finally come forth. Up to this point in the album, songs on Found Heaven exist as clear declarations of emotion with no moral grayness. “Miss You” serves as the first point in the album where Gray allows himself to question his emotions and let them breathe. Bearing resemblance to songwriting inspiration Taylor Swift’s “Champagne Problems,” Gray talks about how he “lost [his lover’s heart] like a promise,” but he is still clinging to the relationship because of his own hurt. The instrumentation of the song mirrors the murky nature of Gray’s lyrics, with overlapping abrasive synth patterns feeling like thoughts batting around in a mind. The sporadic insertions of inquiring synthetic decoration feel accurate to the song’s lyrical ideas of the rapid changes that come with indecision.

“Forever With Me,” a power ballad in the vein of Queen, fails to pack an emotional punch due to its imitational quality. Gray does his best posthumous Freddie Mercury impression, which distracts from its emotion. His grandiose statement on the everlasting nature of love feels hollow because it indirectly plagiarizes its influencesThe downward slope of Found Heaven continues with “Eye of the Night” featuring a grating high-pitched performance from the hometown hero. “Boys & Girls” feels unusually modern in the scope of the tracklist, with the lyrical content and sonic approach being incredibly reminiscent of Panic! At The Disco’s 2013 track “Boys/Boys/Girls.” Both “Eye of the Night” and “Boys & Girls” reflect a lack of originality and experimentation from Gray, which disappoints audiences seeking a fresh outlook from the artist after the stagnation of Superache.

Keeping with the theme of stagnation, “Killing Me” adds to Gray’s four-year-long streak of making an upbeat, angry song that calls out infidelity. Since Kid Krow, Conan Gray has kept this archetype a consistent player in his discography, with “Checkmate” and “Maniac” both occupying this spot on his debut. In the interim, Gray released three songs of this nature, “Telepath,” the Lauv-assisted “Fake,” and Superache’s “Memories.” While this version of the song features energetic vocal echoes and a dynamic, demanding bass groove, the lyrical content and production reflect a much larger unoriginality on Found Heaven.. If you listen to “Telepath,” a single from the last album cycle that made it onto the deluxe edition, and “Killing Me” back to back, it may be hard to differentiate the two. Also lacking a variety in the plot, the latter contains lyrics like “Then you lie to me faster and faster / You’re such a good actor” that are almost directly copied from the aforementioned “Fake,” which sees Gray condemn his former lover for “Lying through his teeth / Cause he’s so fucking fake.”

Each of Gray’s albums has a song where he divulges his tragic past. Kid Krow had “The Story,” Superache had “Family Line,” and Found Heaven has “Winner.” The last of these, however, lacks the same complexity of its predecessors. “The Story” sees Gray send a message of hope and forgiveness to the people who helped and hurt him, while “Family Line” realizes that “[he] can run but [he] can’t hide” from his family line. On the other hand, “Winner” fails to divulge any sort of nuanced message outside of Gray stating “the only thing his dad has “proven” is that “there’s no one who ever has done better / at making me feel worse.” The monotonous track also lacks specificity, while“Family Line” and “The Story” feel anecdotal with their soul-barring emotions “Winner” tries to appeal to the largest audience possible by condemning his father for “what he did'' and not divulging any personal detail. While an artist doesn’t have to be fully transparent, their vulnerability helps audiences connect with their sentiments.

On Found Heaven, Conan Gray feels uncomfortable with his identity and appeal. In an effort to experiment and be too polished in that experimentation, he has lost the messiness that made him so likable. While there are some moments like “Found Heaven” and “Miss You” that give a peek into the balance that Gray could have struck, the album feels disconnected from its intended audience and fails to find elevation in its exploration. Unlike Sunset Season, Kid Krow, and even Superache, Gray’s voice feels overshadowed, poorly identified, and frustratingly simplified.

REVIEWSAfterglow ATXApril 11, 2024album review, conan gray, found heaven, william beachum