F.Virtue is an artist from New York that returned from a multi-year hiatus last year to drop their explosive album, Millennial Love in WWIII. While that album was enjoyable, what F.Virtue didn’t necessarily let us know is that the writing and recording sessions that resulted in that album were so fruitful, there was a second full-length album waiting to see the light as well. Now it’s here in the form of All’s Fair in Love and War but Really All’s Unfair Always.

To find a parallel for these two albums, you don’t have to look to far to find a comparison. That’s because these two albums that F.Virtue has made function in a lot of the same ways that Ceschi’s Sad, Fat Luck and Sans Soleil do. That is to say that while Millennial Love in WWIII and AFILAWBRAUA share a general sound and lyrical themes, Millennial Love in WWIII is more pop friendly, with singles that you can listen on their own that are easily digestible. AFILAWBRAUA on the other hand, is a bit messier makes more sense when listened to as a complete album. Now when I saw the album is messy, I don’t mean that the music is bad. Instead, what I mean is that this album was born of F.Virtue going through a period of turmoil in his life, with his husband leaving him and his music career feeling a little stalled, and so it feels right that this album reflects that. It’s angry and confused, often feeling a little manic as it fluctuates from extremes, but if Virtue is trying to exercise some demons or make sense of it all, or even just document this moment in his life, this sound completely works for the album. F.Virtue produces the majority of the album alongside Skinny Atlas, with a couple of assists from Steel Tipped Dove and King Vulture. Over the course of the album, the sound ranges from folk to punk to dance to industrial to hip hop, sometimes at different moments, but then other times colliding in really interesting and challenging ways. This is apparent on songs like “Honest I Would,” which starts off as an intimate acoustic-guitar led track, but then transports you into this experimental hip hop/dance track before devolving into chaos as things become distorted and vocals are driven to extremes, all highlighting the ways in which Virtue is trying to be cool, but actually having some difficulty dealing with his situation. While much of the album is inwardly focused, Virtue also has a keen eye for taking his own social circles to task, as noted in “Nowadays It’s so Cool to Be Gay Pt. II (I Still Smile With Blood in my Teeth).” In Pt. I, on Millennial Love in WWIII, the song shed light on bullying and discrimination from outside the queer community, but on Pt. II, Virtue is taking the queer community to task for the ways in which people can be socially unhealthy to each other.

All’s Fair in Love and War but Really All’s Unfair Always is a difficult album to listen to in all the best ways. Sometimes life is ugly and messy and doesn’t make sense and you’re not at your best, and sometimes we need music to reflect these periods of turmoil. F.Virtue really opened himself up on the album to document such a period in his life, and in the process made some really inventive and challenging music in the process.