Album Review: Tim by Avicii

On April 20, 2018, the world lost Tim Bergling, better known as EDM crossover hitmaker Avicii. Over a year after his death, the first posthumous collection of music was released as Tim. Backed by his family and completed by a team of producer friends, the set serves as a decent memorial to one of the most popular electronic acts of the 2010s. While much of the album still feels unfinished -- versions of these songs were recorded between January and April of 2018 -- Bergling's final thoughts and sonic visions are handled respectfully, though with varying results.

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What will Tim Bergling's legacy be? At his commercial peak, the late dance producer, best known as Avicii, was reliable for field-sweeping big-tent anthems explicitly designed for mass uplift. There's a scene of magical realism in the recent Elton John biopic Rocketman where, during the piano rocker's legendary residency at Los Angeles venue the Troubadour, the entire audience literally levitates during an electrifying performance of "Crocodile Rock," and it's not hard to imagine something similar taking place in a raver-packed field, a collective festival throng floating on air to the cascading synth chorus of 2011's EDM totem "Levels. " Despite counting a number of real-deal stars in its confines, EDM itself--a subgenre of electronic music in strict economic terms, less definable by its toplines than its bottom line--has rarely made much hay of those stars' actual personalities, to the point where some of them rarely (if ever) reveal their faces to the general public.

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