Vacancy - Ari Lennox

Lennox’s third studio album, Vacancy is perfect for your late night hang out with your not-so-sneaky link. About temporary lovers, all Lennox wants is someone “to fill this Vacancy,” as she sings in the title track. Backed by her mesmerizing R&B sound, Lennox unpacks the highs and lows of a situationship. Using soulful vocals that melt into the intimate beats, she captures her listeners and lover in a warm embrace. Ruminating on this need, its fulfillment, and the aftermath, she creates an emotional world that might rock your soul, but is more likely to rock you to sleep.

Vacancy sounds like a kiddie coaster with a slow start, short peak, and a never ending stop – flowing too smoothly as a whole. Each song rides out a small sonic shift, but in the end is nearly indistinguishable from the others. Every two to three songs, she switches the sounds up and takes you to a different section of the ride. Tracks like “Under the Moon” and “Twin Flame” mark the journey to the peak of this rollercoaster, where both parties are perfectly in sync in a situationship. Early on in the album, they match up with the life cycle of sneaky links, reminding us that while it’s fun, it’s also short lived. 

“High Key,” “Soft Girl Era,” and “Deep Strokes” show Lennox’s short lived joy at having a partner. Sounding almost too different, each song is jarringly upbeat. With pop notes, she captures the happy-go-lucky feeling of disillusioning perfection. While pop can sometimes spice up an album, it can also derail it; here it feels shallow and capricious in its attempt to bring variety. “In first class, I ain't goin' nowhere / Nails, hair, rent paid, take me somewhere,” her chorus rejects the control she gained in demanding someone fill her vacancy. “Soft Girl Era” puts her in the backseat, completely changing the narrative of control and agency she has built over the last 6 tracks. 

Where she was once riding the highs of a fling, the comedown begins in “24 Seconds” and “Twin Flame” where she asks, “You make me feel a way / Do you feel the same?” wondering if she’s perhaps falling faster and harder than her lover ever will. The two tracks blend together, showing the dark side of this relationship dynamic. This shift continues for the remainder of Vacancy, feeling despondent and cold rather than the warmth Lennox has kept us comfortable with. 

Once Lennox has sung the arc of her passionate but fleeting love affair in “Vacancy,” “Under the Moon,” and “Dreaming”, she sings it again and again… and again. The following songs begin to sound like elongated versions of the rest. Rather than creating an album with dynamic angles unified by her sound and theme, the album loses its creative luster on these filler tracks. While still sounding like her signature R&B, it certainly does get old fast and starts to make the 50 minutes feel like a trek that seems to never end. For Lennox fans, Vacancy may not feel like a disappointment since her voice is as strong as ever and her beats as mesmerizing, but for the average listener, the tracks wash together too much to follow a clear story. Leaning heavily on the side of quantity over quality, Vacancy has you reaching for the skip button too often, drowning you in excess songs, even if it is in a pool of luxurious vocal honey.