Was this Supposed to Serve?: Reviewing grentperez' "Backflips in a Restaurant"
- Timson Nguyen
- Jun 16, 2025
- 3 min read
Updated: 2 hours ago
By Timson Nguyen
Artist: grentperez
Genres: Alternative, Indie, Pop
Record Label: Fast Friends
grentperez comes out with his debut studio album Backflips in a Restaurant: a contemporary indie album with folk, pop, rock, and R&B elements. The album features a whimsical production and infatuating lyrics that exude the naivety of a one-sided first crush, and that naivety gives the album a youthful appeal. However, is that youthful appeal at the cost of sounding too elementary?
I first heard of grentperez from my alma mater Rutgers University-New Brunswick as he headlined an event hosted by the Rutgers Association of Philippine Students back in 2024. While I didn’t go, the buzz the event generated for the artist was undeniable. The event sold out in a day, with everyone within my network wanting to go solely see grentperez. From the Instagram stories that I’ve watched, I could see the appeal of the artist: captivating, playful, and at times intimate. I decided to follow his career from here to see what else he has in store as an artist. I wanted to understand the stories he was conveying through his music and performance.
One year later in early spring 2025, I stumbled upon one of the singles off of this album, “Dandelion” featuring Ruel, on YouTube. Listening to the song, I was reeled in. I began to understand the hype behind grentperez with "Dandelion": a pop-rock song, with alternative R&B elements, and charming melodies. Additionally, Ruel’s feature adds so much depth with his raspiness. All in all, the song had me anticipating what more grentperez has to offer with a playfully mature single.
Now, as I listen to the album with the expectations that “Dandelion” set, I find myself underwhelmed. While grentperez maintains the playful and innocent sound that Dandelion exudes, the album saturates this sound into what I hear to be too elementary for my taste. To some it can come off whimsical and fantastical with folk songs such as “Everest”, “Fuzzy Feelings”, and “Reason Why” that lay out prairies. To others, it can come off innocently romantic with songs such as “Nice to Meet You”, “Falling for a Friend”, or “Need You Around”. However, to me, the entirety of the project comes off too playful for its own good. I was hoping for more playfully mature moments similar to “Dandelion”. It also doesn’t help that the other singles “2DK” and “Movie Scene” also have this mature R&B sound which does not define what the album is. The only true singles that encapsulate the youthful innocence of Backflips in a Restaurant are “Fuzzy Feelings” and “Need You Around”; why weren’t they pushed more?
Additionally, what further pushed my underwhelmness is the pacing. grentperez would jump from one genre to another, an upbeat tempo to a downbeat tempo, or one mood to another too radically. The first mishap was between the “Nice to Meet You” and “Girl at the Station”: why set up this crescendoing indie rock outro to make the next song a ballad? It doesn’t allow for the excitement that “Nice to Meet You” builds to marinate; “Girl at the Station” kills its momentum. Then, there’s the last quarter of the album that suddenly focuses on the mature R&B sound I’ve been expecting. While they’re all singles and the sound I was waiting to hear from Perez, the tone was already set and the sudden genre change confused me as a listener.
Overall, grentperez creates a solid album that exudes the light, playful, and innocent energies we could all use right now, but he fails to curate these sounds effectively. The raw and romantic appeal of this album led by folk songs like “Reason Why” and ballads like “Yours to Keep” are strong but are weakened by their youthful counterparts: “Fuzzy Feelings” and “Girl at the Station” respectively. Ultimately, Backflips in a Restaurant is not only grentperez’s debut, but his internal tug-of-war as he juggles between deciding whether to take his musical career in a more mature or youth-focused direction. What direction will he take?
Score: 6.25 |
You can read more from live reactions to a more in-depth review of grentperez' "Backflips in a Restaurant" on my Notion page, Timson's Sound.
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