Breaking from tradition, I’m not going to be talking about an album today, or even an EP.

Instead, I’m going to be talking about a single that annoyed me enough that I felt compelled to write about it and the unnecessarily annoying way it’s being released.

That single is “No New Friends,” the latest from LSD, a supergroup of sorts consisting of singers Labrinth and Sia, along with producer-extraordinaire Diplo.

Now, while this is ostensibly a single, the single comes along with nearly half of the group’s upcoming self-titled album. When each subsequent single has been released, they’ve been bankrolled on streaming platforms into a continuously growing package that will eventually flourish into a fully-fledged album.

We truly are living in a post-Kanye world when it comes to the ways records are released, and for albums like these, it demonstrates how little thought has gone into crafting an album as an experience, instead just leaning on the strength of radio-friendly singles.

“Radio-friendly” is the operative phrase here. Starting with “No New Friends” and progressing through the previously released singles, it’s clear that each of these songs is crafted around a pretty basic formula:

Sia and Labrinth sing back and forth over a bright and bouncy beat crafted by Diplo on the verses; those verses give way to a chorus that is almost invariably just non-lexical things like “la-la-la” or the stereotypical “millennial whoop”; the first verse will be repeated in the place of a real bridge; the chorus is repeated five more times.

Lather, rinse, repeat.

This isn’t to disparage the quality of the singing from either of these performers; both Labrinth and Sia sound absolutely incredible, especially in the haunting opener of “Mountains.” Even Diplo’s production is worthy of praise, as it’s as sunny and positive as a Fourth of July barbecue; the production never even comes close to approaching the psychedelic nature implied by the group’s name, but it’s undeniably catchy.

But where LSD suffers is in the songwriting. These songs just feel thrown together, and the slowly-expanding nature of the record does little to distract the listener from how much these songs sound the same.

While I still haven’t heard the other half of the record, I think it’ll be a struggle for the songwriting to impress me.

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By Patrick Kernan

pkernan@timesleader.com

Reach Patrick Kernan at 570-991-6386 or on Twitter @PatKernan