Jekyll from his vindictive, ennui-stricken Mr. Positioned as the bookends on his latest effort, Tesfaye’s two collaborations with the faceless pair end up splitting his existing Weeknd persona neatly in half, cleaving the sweet, sensitive sadboy Dr.

This isn’t much of a surprise, since as Random Access Memories confirmed, Daft Punk is now firmly entrenched in a second-act career as musical middle-men, connecting the widest-possible audiences with their personal brand of stylish retro-fetishism, moving away from the ebullient innovation that defined their earlier output. But just as Daft Punk succeeded in harnessing Pharrell’s inherent charm on “Get Lucky,” condensing him into the sweet-voiced figurehead for a buoyant cheeseball anthem, the French duo manages to get the best out of their latest collaborator without effecting any real transformation from the artist’s usual lightweight sensibility. These qualities seem ripe to be punctured by a pair of neo-house masterminds, famous for their ecstatic, energetic arrangements and elaborate robot suits. Perhaps no songwriter working today so uncomfortably blends an innate pop sensibility with a bottomless appetite for making utterly joyless, consistently mopey music as the Weeknd, né Abél Tesfaye.

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