The Singles Jukebox

Man, we are certainly liking us some country this year, aren’t we…

[Video][Website]
[6.10]

Michaelangelo Matos: Advice you’ve already heard, in a way you’ve already heard it.
[5]

Chuck Eddy: Too lyrically unspecific to be my favorite track on Shine (that’d be “Wild Rebel Rose,” which is basically Martina’s “Janie’s Got A Gun” except better), but close. Nothing in the lyric feels the need to telegraph how much push and throb this song gets from its blues-rock guitar — and the prettiness and repeated words only help it groove more. She gets knocked down, but she gets up again, you’re never gonna keep her down.
[8]

Anthony Easton: I suspect that sharing a bottle of wine with McBride would only make her weepy, not free in any real sense of the word.
[4]

Martin Skidmore: McBride has a strong voice, but the medium pace and hackneyed arrangement offers her little, and the lyrics are tedious. I can take mediocre country rather more easily than most rubbish, in that the craft and singing are always skilled, but this is a dull record.
[4]

John Seroff: Twangy, catchy, red wine country with a lot of Pat Benatar in its DNA, “Wrong” is grown-up music, more wry than cutting. I like the way McBride handles the phrasing; even though the song never quite gets out of third gear, there’s enough momentum to carry this into multiple listenings. Recommended for the upward arc of the end of the breakup, right around when you’re cleaning up the last of their leftover shit out of the bathroom.
[7]

Alex Macpherson: McBride mops up a friend’s mess of a broken heart in a tender but efficient way; you believe that her heart’s in the right place, but not that she’s been there or understands in the way that, say, Taylor Swift does in “Fifteen”. The chant-along chorus is a big, rousing hook, which makes the song seem even more business-like.
[6]

Alfred Soto: Inside this stomper lies a narrative, but neither the guitars nor McBride’s voice coax it out; afraid they’ll bore us, they head right to the chorus. “Independence Day” excepted, she’s not particularly compelling enough of a singer to force me to pay attention anyway. So she lets the slide guitars moan wrong baby wrong.
[7]

Pete Baran: There is a hitch in “Wrong Baby Wrong” which makes the whole thing work. It’s a rueful piece of work, aiming for the smokey honkytonks, landing squarely in country music daytime radio — but there is nowt wrong with that. That said, once you realise what it’s going to do, there are few surprises. In that way at least it is like its near namesake, the Ben Affleck-directed film “Gone Baby Gone”; when you realise that Morgan Freeman did it, you have to wait around for half an hour til the film ends with its moral quandary.
[6]

Frank Kogan: Martina McBride’s voice feels so attractively warm and dependable you don’t think of her as the singer to produce wildness and lunacy. Paradoxically, her two best hits, “When God-Fearin’ Women Get The Blues” and “Independence Day“, are about going wild and out of control, one comically, the other with terrible destruction. Yet her reassuring warmth as a singer means that when she goes “let the right be wrong” in “Independence Day”, this rips open the world of the song while the greater moral order of the universe still feels whole. In “Wrong Baby Wrong Baby Wrong” she’s all reassurance: “It ain’t the end of the world.” The guitars may have a different opinion, however, playing propulsive stutter chords in a style invented by Keith Richards in the early ’70s. The propulsion moves the song and she sways along with it while remaining essentially unruffled. She contains rock without being rocked.
[8]

Ian Mathers: I’ve heard good things about her, but this one at least is just pleasantly generic.
[6]

1 blerg » Tuesday, March 9th, 2010 8:00 pm

Still, at least they beat Kris Allen…

[Video][Website]
[4.60]

Martin Skidmore: As indie goes, I find Spoon more tolerable than most, perhaps because each single seems to be in a different genre. Singer Britt Daniel puts some effort into it, and the music here is very old-fashioned pop-rock. I don’t think it amounts to so much, and the opening couplet rather made me cringe, but it’s okay.
[5]

Edward Okulicz: Spoon, to me, have always seemed like an unremarkable, workmanlike, inoffensive indie guitar group, and innocuousness naturally breeds no enemies. Kudos to them, then, for introducing that awfully unpleasant piano like they’re covering The Black Eyed Peas’ “Joints & Jams” (remember, that awful interminable piano jam at the end? Ugh), because it becomes the hateful focal point instantly, overshadowing everything else.
[2]

Erick Bieritz: This ugly junk-heap beat might make sense in some other context, but Spoon just seems to be aspiring to be an unfunky troglodyte version of Maroon 5.
[1]

Ian Mathers: These guys used to be so assured, but this is as awkward as the “reverse/hearse” rhyme of the first two lines.
[4]

Chuck Eddy: The pervasive hunch in my head is that my fellow Austinites here are better than I usually give them credit for. But usually when I take time to go back and check out their music, evidence suggests the opposite. That’s happened twice just this week. A couple days ago I was piecing together a SXSW playlist for Rhapsody, and I had the lightbulb idea of including their infamous old anti-Elektra-Records complaint “The Agony Of Lafitte” back-to-back with Cracker’s (way better it turns out) anti-Virgin screed “Ain’t Gonna Suck Itself,” but the Spoon song sounded so pale I wound up resorting to their (only, in my book) old standby “Small Stakes” instead. Then last night I was watching an old Veronica Mars episode, and when the credits ran, what I had taken to be an entirely ignorable piece of college/alt/emo fluff wisping away in the background turned out to be “I Summon You,” off Gimme Fiction. So as much as I’m open to being convinced Spoon are as special within the indie realm as everybody insists, I’m still not there yet. This track isn’t bad, though: slightly funky groove, a clever rhyme or two, borderline pretty falsetto and chunky guitar fills, and the singer could even get a job in actual rock band if this gig doesn’t pan out. As usual with these guys: Pleasant and tasteful. But exciting, engaging? Let’s not get carried away.
[6]

Michaelangelo Matos: What stays with me on Transference isn’t the more straightforward rockers but the more rhythm-based stuff: “The Mystery Zone” and especially “Who Makes Your Money,” which sounds like minimal techno reimagined by and for rock fans. Which isn’t to say the rock songs don’t make an impact. This is a good example, with the guitars and drums lurching hard and Britt Daniel getting off a volley of good lines (”Some people are so easily shuffled and dealt”). I like it a lot; just don’t love it the way I do the above-mentioned.
[7]

Alfred Soto: “All I know is all I know,” wails Britt Daniel on the most straightforward track from their most abstruse album, following it with the evidence: bucket loads of his patented strum-raunch to augment the barrelhouse piano. After such knowledge, another well-known wit once wrote, what forgiveness?
[7]

Alex Macpherson: The first Spoon song I’ve heard, you guys! And even worse than I’d expected: pinched, prissy barroom blues, bereft of swing or spirit, and a singer who seems to be under the mistaken impression that his emphysematic bellow is an adequate attempt at mimicking a wracked bluesman’s croak.
[3]

Iain Forrester: In line with the little else I’ve heard, Spoon do meticulous and finely detailed very well. Just wish that they could (or would) cut loose a little more when the song begs for it as much as this does. Even when they go for strangled half screams, they sound far too in control to really get carried along with it. The crunch into the coda is a slight saving grace but comes too late.
[6]

Dan MacRae: Approaching swaggering but never really reaching it, this feels like saloon rock for people that would dive underneath a table at the first hint of a gunfight. Sensible, but sorta dull.
[5]

no blergs » Tuesday, March 9th, 2010 4:00 pm

The reigning American Idol is not a man given to looking interesting…

[Video][Website]
[4.10]

Ian Mathers: How does such an intermittently fascinating show produce such consistently dull music?
[3]

Alfred Soto: “We can make a feast of these crumbs” is the kind of howler a Neil Tennant or Mary J. Blige could infuse with wit or need, respectively. But Allen’s perfectly OK regular-guy pipes treat it like they don’t know the reason between living and dying. Such a nice boy, though.
[4]

Martin Skidmore: Not that I was a fan, but he did a decent job on soul standards on American Idol. However, here we have an ultra-lite rock cover. He delivers the overcrowded lyric with a nimble touch (helped by two vocal tracks), but there isn’t much on offer to a singer beyond avoiding sounding too rushed.
[3]

Michaelangelo Matos: Idea: urgent. Execution: glib.
[4]

Al Shipley: “86,400 seconds in a day/ to turn it all around or throw it all away/ we gotta tell ‘em that we love ‘em while we got the chance” — so, an ode to expressing affection for units of time, which is a strange concept. Musically, it’s the kind of bland pretty adult contempo nonsense I’m usually a sucker for, but even I can tell when it could be better.
[6]

Doug Robertson: While cramming the entirety of a mawkish self help book into a three and a half minute long pop song is undoubtedly a timesaver, it’s not exactly a worthwhile task.
[3]

Pete Baran: I am naturally predisposed to like songs with a glass half full philosophical message, and rather like the way the chorus plays. It is therefore a misfortune that Kris has picked upon my least favourite aphorism; whilst the majority of the dying I have ever witnessed has been mocked up by actors, most of it seems extremely painful. The last way I want to spend the rest of my life is clutching my chest wildly, in the throes of some never ending heart attack, or with the exquisite pain of a gunshot wound.
[4]

Chuck Eddy: No lie — when I first heard this on the radio, I actually guessed it might be the collaboration between Bono and Jay-Z for Haiti (which I still haven’t heard, apparently.) Switched stations too soon to learn otherwise, too. Funny, but I still have to dock the guy a notch for not spending two-point-seven seconds on a bull named Fu Manchu.
[5]

Kat Stevens: After a shaky Bruce Hornsby start, this flowers into a pleasant lighters-aloft call-to-arms that wouldn’t be out of place in the closing credits of a romantic comedy. I think if this young man was serenading me outside my window in an attempt to atone for some minor faux pas, then I would wait until he’d finished the song before chucking a bucket of water over him.
[7]

John Seroff: “Live Like We’re Dying” teaches us that the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, not to sweat the small stuff, all we are is dust in the wind, you only get so many sunrises, a stitch in time saves nine, keep your feet on the ground and keep reaching for the stars. It takes more muscles to frown than to smile. You can’t judge a book by its cover but if it looks like a duck and walks like a duck, it’s probably a duck.
[2]

3 blergs » Tuesday, March 9th, 2010 12:00 pm

Wrapped in plastic, it’s OK-ish…

[Video][Website]
[6.00]

Ian Mathers: If she had this one sitting around, why on earth did she ever release “Obsessed”? “Up Out My Face” is like that song except with better production, a better chorus, a sense of humour and a great guest turn from Minaj (which, okay, was added after “Obsessed” came out, but even without her this one is much better). Even the video is funny!
[8]

Al Shipley: My respective least favorite and favorite moments on Memoirs were the insipid original version of this song, and the lively marching band reprise that followed it. Unfortunately, this is just the former all over again, with Left Eye 2010 stretching out her voice and trying to make it as unappealing as humanly possible.
[2]

Alex Ostroff: Mariah imperiously and hilariously tells off an ex who just can’t take a hint over a languidly strutting piano line. In doing so, she gives us the bridge, which gradually grows from mildly strange to completely bonkers, and is hands down the best moment of Memoirs: “Not even a welder and a builder can rebuild this shit… Not even a nail technician with a whole lotta gel and acrylic can fix this shit… If we were two Lego blocks, even the Harvard University Graduating Class of 2010 couldn’t put us back together again.” And that would have been enough, but the remix completes the ascension of the delightfully insane Nicki Minaj to the major leagues, and includes the marching-band reprise in the video. “AttennnnnnSHUN. About Face!”
[10]

Matt Cibula: Months later, Memoirs of an Imperfect Angel continues to be a fascinating messy beast. This track wasn’t great until now, though, so let’s just go ahead and give the assist to Nicki M., who has a lot of haters in this world but not me. I was confused about the Harvard Class of 2010 thing until I realized it was a blatant beg for a Hasty Pudding Woman of the Year Award. Maybe next year!
[7]

Martin Skidmore: In the old days, we didn’t get acts making a few singles every week, as the The-Dream/Tricky combo seem to be doing. This is a completely anonymous and rather droney track, with no opportunities for Mariah’s vocal pyrotechnics, but it is enlivened significantly by the superb Minaj’s sharp rapping.
[6]

Michaelangelo Matos: Kind of a lurching beat for Mariah, and while the song isn’t offensive it doesn’t have much stick either. The guest plays right along, putting the ho in ho-hum.
[5]

Chuck Eddy: Nicki’s passably fun at the beginning (”all up in the church he was sneakin’ with the deacon,” then a few seconds of that fake grime accent schtick she does, then “attention… about face”), and she gets to “vroom vroom” once later. And the marching band section free lunch tacked on at the end is a surprise. But otherwise this lacks the burlesque humor and adorability quotient of its video. Mariah sounds joyless as usual, give or take racing through that ditzy class of 2010 not putting things back together again like Humpty Dumpty part (if that’s even her). Still, this song does have some stuff in it, I admit.
[6]

Alfred Soto: A reconstituted vehicle, with parts manufactured in 1998-1999: Missy’s “Sock It 2 Me,” Aaliyah’s “Are You That Somebody,” and a band interlude from Jordan Knight’s “Give It To You” (Nicki Minaj even echoes Lil Kim’s bit from “Hit’Em wit da Hee”). Carey acts as indifferently as the girl who lets her mechanic worry about dirty things like changing the oil. He checked under the hood alright, and poured sugar in the gas tank.
[3]

Hillary Brown: I’m not not feeling this song, but I’m also not really feeling it, which is frustrating. Perhaps it’s that it feels like there’s not enough Mariah on her own track or that Nicki Minaj isn’t nearly as convincing as Trey Songz when she says “LOL smiley face.” It’s a nice, slow groove, and I like it when Mariah gets to do some of that delicate, high-pitched work — it’s like a vacation for her — but it’s maybe a bit too relaxed without ever getting into spa-riffic mud-bath territory. Lukewarm, I guess.
[6]

Iain Forrester: A new Mariah single is definitely not the first place I would expect the see the device of the very long run-on line, careering out of the confines of structure. There it is, though, and seems a natural thing to build on all the enjoyably playful touches that come before. Also, I know I’m late here, but what the hell is with Nicki Minaj’s accent? Not complaining as such, because it mostly lends an off-kilter charm that fits, just wondering.
[7]

7 blergs » Monday, March 8th, 2010 4:45 pm

Canada’s 78-legged groove machine returns…

[Video][Website]
[4.50]

Anthony Easton: This is so vague, atmospheric, general, and uplifting — we could have had them play at the Olympics and pretend to be hip, as opposed to Anne Murrary and Bryan Adams, and prove how square we really are.
[7]

Erick Bieritz: Broken Social Scene made a big impact eight years ago by fusing together the best elements of different bands playing different styles, combining post-rock with proto-pop in a way that didn’t seem possible beforehand and proved difficult to replicate afterward. If “World Sick” is any indication, then BSS, like the similarly conceived Sea and Cake before it, now has the worst of both worlds rather than the best, with an overlong noodly instrumental mess punctuated by tastefully unconvincing concessions to pop structure.
[3]

Martin Skidmore: They could have gone to a bit more trouble rather than recording a first rehearsal, surely? You’d think out of so many people, they could choose a singer who can sing, but no. Perhaps he drew the short straw or something. Tedious twiddling which outstays its welcome by at least five minutes.
[1]

Alfred Soto: The convincing churn-and-spew that these guys build and spill evokes an era before Modest Mouse realized they could cram their dynamics into a three-minute single and still land a gold record. But the Mice were/are weirder and crunchier, while these guys are artier and slower. Some call this progress.
[5]

Chuck Eddy: I get that there are people who hated prog-rock back in the ’70s yet now believe indie’s alleged current prog stage is, uh, progress. I just don’t understand it. I mean, at least ’70s prog-rock frequently had rock in it. This travesty, meanwhile, is long enough to house two boring indie songs. The point is for the drums.
[1]

Matt Cibula: Kind of against this sort of thing on principle, but it might be time to throw out that principle. Lovely sounds here, romantic cymbal splashes, authentic-sounding desperate yearning in the vocals, guitars as big as Thunder Bay. Extra point for winning the hockey gold medal.
[6]

Michaelangelo Matos: There are pretty instrumental touches, it builds skillfully, but the song is negligible and the climaxes feel washed out. It seems honest enough, but it’s not for me.
[5]

Alex Ostroff: The opening instrumentals sit halfway between You Forgot It In People and something by Studio, and there are some gorgeous textural touches throughout the song. The chorus is vaguely inspirational and explodes through the murk to decent effect. But old-school BSS would ensure that six minutes of build eventually led somewhere – usually a triumphant horn line or a cascade of guitars or…anything, really. As an album track this is pleasant enough, but until I hear more from Forgiveness Rock Record, “World Sick” is leaving me with a funny feeling in the pit of my stomach.
[7]

Ian Mathers: The production is fine (no overdriven Animal Collective mush here), the people involved are clearly skilled musicians… there’s just not much of a song here. And while I’m normally fine with a track like this getting by on atmosphere, the song actually has a pretty good chorus (dodgy lyrical sentiments notwithstanding). As always, BSS half-ass it; not slack enough to be narcotically loose, not tight enough to be melodically compelling.
[5]

Additional Scores

Doug Robertson: [5]

2 blergs » Monday, March 8th, 2010 12:45 pm

What’s a guy gotta do to catch a break round here, eh?…

[Website]
[3.67]

Martin Skidmore: At its best, this approaches the delicate loveliness of Air, the lightly autotuned weak voice at least sounding reasonably sweet, and the electro music being very pretty. I wish it had a memorable tune, but generally I like this.
[7]

Hillary Brown: Pretty, twinkly shopping music, and that sounds like more of a denigration than it is. It would be hard and cranky to hate this focus on melody and pleasant sounds, but I’m sure some folks will find a way.
[7]

Matt Cibula: I know we’re all supposed to be taking pop music at face value and without preconceptions here, but all I can think of is the e.e. cummings line “there is some shit i will not eat.”
[1]

Doug Robertson: When we reviewed “Fireflies” on here, I said that if he stopped being so blatant about his influences there might be something interesting going on, but I now sadly realise that he doesn’t so much wear his influences on his sleeve as have a wardrobe made up entirely of neon t-shirts bearing the slogan “I HEART THE POSTAL SERVICE”.
[4]

Iain Forrester: Weirdly, despite every change from the Postal Service model being very much for the worse, the mere fact that there’s a little more distance than “Fireflies” had makes me more sympathetic to this. There’s some enjoyable prettiness in there, if only it wasn’t so overegged and laden down with terrible, embarassing lyrics.
[4]

Michaelangelo Matos: “Pour me a dose of atmosphere”! Can you believe this fucking kid? From level of inspiration to number of twinkling synthesizers, it’s like margarine smeared on frosting.
[2]

Alfred Soto: Almost as good as “I look at my hands and feel sad,” which the Ben Gibbard clone sings like he’s never owned a pair of hands. “As many times as I blink I’ll think of you tonight,” he promises over piano tinkle. That’s 22,000 times on average, people. Get a hobby, guy, that doesn’t involve starting a band.
[1]

Chuck Eddy: The one thing I’ll say about the whining here is that at least it doesn’t subvert itself by revving up into lame-ass pop-punk, as countless bands with similar outloooks but deluded about their inability to rock out have done in recent years. In other words, it has the fortitude to rely on just its wimpiness. Still sucks bigtime, natch, but I’ve gotta respect Mr. Owl for that.
[4]

Edward Okulicz: Owl City don’t really exist do they? This is just a Hellogoodbye song slowed down and released opportunistically to capitalise on the baffling success of “Fireflies”, surely… though as the comparisons to better bands shows, this isn’t entirely without artistry – there are pretty hooks and attractively bad lyrics, but the trills and chimes of the music are not flattering to them – like “Fireflies” it’s sugary rather than flavoursome.
[3]

Alex Ostroff: Stars kiss you, he misses you, sad rhymes with bad, and blink rhymes with think. Despite light jazzy touches that might have some redeeming value, there is but one thing keeping this from a [0]: I’ve heard the entire album and know for a fact that the worst is yet to come. (Just wait until you all hear “Dental Care”!)
[2]

Additional Scores

Pete Baran: [2]
Anthony Easton: [7]

8 blergs » Monday, March 8th, 2010 8:45 am

This screengrab, though… this one works just fine, I reckon…

[Video][Website]
[6.14]

Al Shipley: The Blurillaz juggernaut, a massively successful franchise based on the idea of combining a washed up Britpop singer with washed up ‘alternative’ rappers, continues to stupefy me. This song doesn’t sound like it will be ubiquitous for the next year, but I thought that with “Clint Eastwood” and “Feel Good Inc.”, and both times it turned out to be wishful thinking.
[2]

Ian Mathers: I actually like Albarn’s rather diffident vocals, but does anyone else kind of wish they’d just given the whole song – hell, the whole album – to Womack? He sounds great, and surprisingly natural, over the burbling electronic backing.
[7]

Martin Skidmore: Womack is of course long past his best, and just roars some random lines that could be outtakes from something like “Across 110th Street” over the sophisticated, rather dark electro backing. I always kind of want to hate Gorillaz, but actually this is mostly very appealing, thanks to the best vocals I’ve been faced with on the Jukebox in ages.
[8]

Michaelangelo Matos: I’m sure there are better singers they could have gotten than Bobby Womack, who sounds pretty blown out, but his gravitas is welcome. Damon’s never been a favorite singer, but his masterminding is still astute, and I like the way this bounds in place. Give him this much: he has an ear for plastic synths.
[7]

Alfred Soto: A track with land so arable that even Damon Albarn can flower, even with Bobby W reduced to soul signifier. Still, its burbling electro-bass foundation serves as anesthetic: these guys have done this many times. They might as well hire Aretha and George Michael for a minimalist synth-happy remake of their “I Knew You Were Waiting for Me”. As long as they can lift Mos Def’s superb bit here whole.
[7]

Matt Cibula: Not feeling this the way Damon probably wants me to, but his stunt casting works about halfway; i.e., Bobby Womack is God on a stick, but Mos Def does what he usually does. Forced myself to listen to this without watching the video; it probably needs the visual element.
[6]

Doug Robertson: First time I heard this I didn’t actually realise that it was a new song, I just assumed it was something I’d heard before and had forgotten about. Is that a good thing? Sure it’s an undeniable talent to create something that instantly sounds familiar and fills you with a warm feeling of recognition, and this is a good song, with a riff that’s as bouncily laid back as an over used rubber band, but shouldn’t new music sound more, well… new?
[6]

5 blergs » Friday, March 5th, 2010 9:45 am

The screengrab is rather less impressive when it’s not part of the video, isn’t it?…

[Video][Myspace]
[6.55]

Michaelangelo Matos: Favorite piece of criticism of the year to date comes from my four-and-a-half-year-old niece Veronica. When I asked her in mid-January if she’d seen Fantastic Mr. Fox, she said with evident exasperation, “Michael, it’s not a movie for kids“. Veronica loves pre-teenpop, including Selena Gomez (her favorite, according to her mom), but this is not a song for adults.
[5]

Anthony Easton: The video is pretty cool, and I love the necklace she wears in it, plus who did her hair?
[4]

Chuck Eddy: Her album came within spitting distance of my Top Ten last year, and this marginally danceable and emotive run-of-the-mill electrobubble-rocker sure didn’t get in the way. But no way is it up there with “Kiss & Tell” or “As a Blonde” or “Stop & Erase.” Fairly positive “Falling Down” and “Tell Me Something I Don’t Know” have it beat, as well.
[6]

Matt Cibula: The beauty of a well-done Paulina Rubio single is nothing at which to sneeze. Neither is her canny song choice on the album (Fefe Dobson!), so she’s maybe a genius or maybe has some very good advisors.
[8]

Doug Robertson: More pop from the Disney stable that normally churns out workhorses but occasionally gifts the world a thoroughbred. I’m not averse to a bit of Duff, and this is a bit of a halfway house between Hilary’s more electronic Dignity album and her previous work. It’s not as lightweight as the fluff churned out by the Jonas Brothers et al, and has the hard-to-capture feel of something which hasn’t just been put together in a factory by some marketing execs specifically to target certain demographics. The fact that that’s clearly exactly what has happened and hiding that fact was a vital part of the creative process is something I am choosing to ignore.
[7]

Alex Ostroff: One of these days I will learn to not underestimate the Disney roster — this will make the third or fourth awesome pop album I’ve irrationally slept on in the past five years. The elastic rockabilly guitar from Miley’s “See You Again” is married to a throbbing bassline and panning, clattering percussion. And while I go in expecting anodyne factory-pop, I leave wondering how all of Disney’s actress-turnt-singers manage to be so intuitively good at it. Selena’s tone is the closest teenpop’s come to Lindsay’s throatiness since A Little More Personal, and her production has a swing and a kick that’s been missing since Hilary’s “Come Clean” remix. Now, excuse me; I have some catching up to do.
[8]

Martin Skidmore: Selena has a strong and warm voice, and this is classy electro pop, with a bouncy tempo and a strong chorus, if nothing terribly original to say.
[8]

Al Shipley: Is that…an AutoTuned Gorilla Zoe that shows up to sing a line of backup in the last chorus? That’s what it sounds like, anyway.
[3]

Frank Kogan: Little Miss Heartface is surprisingly warm where I’d been expecting her to land somewhere between a chirp and a screech, though writer-producers Antonina Armato & Tim James have a history of warmth with Hoku and Aly & AJ. This rolls along so unobtrusively you don’t consciously pick up how crowded and emotive it gets with all its vocal embellishments, building to loudness that still feels soft.
[9]

Martin Kavka: I’m not a fan of Gomez’s voice — the way she says “energy” and even “baby” just rankles — but I’m pleasantly surprised by the US chart success of something so blatantly in the dance genre. The most similar song of recent vintage is Agnes’s “Release Me,” but even if “Naturally” is less exhilarating musically, its lyrics are far more fascinating. For while Selena notes that “your energy comes naturally,” this doesn’t actually seem to be the case. The “force of nature” only expresses itself “when you’re with me,” and so Selena becomes the direct cause of her beloved’s appeal. At one point she sings “you are the thunder and I am the lightning”. Lightning, of course, precedes thunder.
[7]

Iain Forrester: Selena offers up an unusual two-in-one here: go for the ridiculous, overpowering Euro bosh (”You are the thunder! I AM THE LIGHTNING!”) and she’ll throw in shuddering bass bits that hint at something a lot more complex. Not a bad deal, though the two don’t exactly sit together naturally.
[7]

6 blergs » Thursday, March 4th, 2010 5:30 pm

Electro-pop underachievers dent the Hot 100…

[Video][Website]
[4.64]

Iain Forrester: Shiny Toy Guns have some pretty great tools and materials at their disposal here. Staccato tension building, a range of good synth tones, singer switching in and out of ice queen mode at will. Sadly, they’ve chosen for some reason not to put them towards their own creation but instead to rebuild someone else’s. They were never likely to look anything but worse in comparison, so why do it?
[6]

Edward Okulicz: I really liked the synth-disco miserablism of Shiny Toy Guns’ first album, even if the songs weren’t particularly good uses of the weapons in their arsenal, but what they did have was drama, huge choruses, great vocal interplay and a lot of charm. This, by contrast, is smooth, frictionless and flat.
[4]

Martin Kavka: There is nothing here to keep me from writing about the difficulty of rebranding, concluding in laughter that Lincoln ever thought that by associating Shiny Toy Guns with their MKZ model, they would magically switch from being a brand of geezer cars to being the hip choice for fortysomethings who loved John Hughes in their youth.
[2]

Alex Ostroff: At some point in the endless cycle of pop-music-eats-itself, the question ceases to be “Is ‘Major Tom’ an awesome song?” (Answer: Dear God YES!) and becomes “Was an amped-up, female-fronted funkless reverb-heavy electropop cover of ‘Major Tom’ really necessary?”. The most gracious thing I can say about this recording is that the dude never takes the mic outside ‘4…3…2…1…”, which saves the track from descending into Brokencydery (as it does in the live video). Created for a Lincoln MK Z commercial, the cover’s very existence boggles the mind. After all, nothing says “Buy our cars!” quite like the story of a technological malfunction that strands an astronaut in the depths of space.
[3]

Alfred Soto: Since “Space Oddity” is not one of my favorite Bowie numbers, Peter Schilling’s hit registered more as signpost than music. In 1983, so many synth poppers aped Bowie’s soaring human choruses and robotoid verses that it was about time somebody stole one of his classic tropes without worrying about tricky things like “pastiche” (naturally, this somebody was a German). Whoever Shiny Toy Guns are, they have the right idea: skip the verses and go straight for the chorus, which is almost indelible. Stevie Nicks could have traded “Stand Back” for this and no one would have noticed.
[7]

Chuck Eddy: The girl orbits space weightlessly enough as she sits in her tin can high above the moon, not adding anything to Bowie’s and Peter Schilling’s legacy, yet not shaming it either. But when the boys come in, they really clunk up the countdown.
[6]

Anthony Easton: This is blandly atmospheric, and has a techno paranoia that with all of the discussion of robots being our lovers and friends, seems vaguely retro futuristic. Charming.
[6]

Matt Cibula: Oh, man, the future is going to suck so hard. (To be fair, I hated this song when it first came out too.)
[2]

Additional Scores

Michaelangelo Matos: [5]
Doug Robertson: [7]
Martin Skidmore: [3]

2 blergs » Thursday, March 4th, 2010 1:30 pm

He’s not in his video much, either…

[Video][Website]
[6.50]

Doug Robertson: This is what I largely suspect music made by parrots would sound like. Flighty, flappy and dreaming of escape.
[7]

Martin Kavka: Dreamy indie guy realizes he sounds a bit like Erlend Oye, produces a song that sounds like a remix of the tracks Oye did with Royksopp on Melody A.M., and pleases those folks who have been pining for a Royksopp/Oye reunion. If it’s not exactly original, it’s at least quite skilled.
[7]

Anthony Easton: Is Arthur Russell become so canonical among musicians that second-generation rip-offs are happening? I thought he was just a critical darling.
[5]

Martin Skidmore: I love dance music, but I wish there weren’t the trend towards terrible indie vocals. Actually, you wouldn’t want to dance to this either – its electronica is determinedly intellectual rather than visceral. Take out the feeble and geeky vocal, and I’d rather like it in an abstract not fussed kind of way. Anyone remember Ross’s musical project in Friends?
[4]

Alex Macpherson: A beat fucked around with enough to make sure it comes off as “experimental” indietronica, rather than straight-up dance music; but not fucked around with to the extent of, say, Matmos. Fast enough to pass as upbeat, without ever making you want to dance (never have so many cowbells been put to so little use). A vocal which codes as sensitive, but doesn’t go so far as to express any emotion other than a vague timorousness. Business as usual for this peddler of proto-electrodribble.
[4]

Tal Rosenberg: I’m going to guess — and I could be totally wrong — that people who rate this really low will be unfamiliar with Caribou’s oeuvre. And that’s fine (making presumptions is probably not, but whatever), since maybe this song should be judged on its own merits. To my ears, it’s divine: The bass-keyboard “boing” punctuated by bird calls and breaths and handclaps and skronks. Snaith’s voice might be a little too fey for some, but I love its sensitivity against the music. This song is light and agile, like good prose and breakfast and TV. And if you are familiar with the rest of Caribou’s oeuvre, then the transformation into this particularly humid brand of dance-pop only makes it better.
[9]

Ian Mathers: I’ve never been much of a fan of the various phases of Dan Snaith’s work as Manitoba/Caribou, even though he’s usually working in forms or using sounds that tend to appeal to me. I respect what he does, but it’s never really grabbed me. “Odessa” is still a little underwhelming, but Snaith’s new (to me) vocal resemblance to Arthur Russell and that inexorably galumphing baseline make this one of my favourite songs of his.
[7]

John Seroff: D.Snaith/Caribou/Manitoba has been grinding since 2000 and it’s heartening to see him helming a song that has every indication of being a blog-to-mainstream breakout hit that will hopefully let him buy a house. “Odessa” is a lovely, floppy, LCD Soundsystem kind of thing; highly structured but just a bit funky. I like it a lot.
[8]

Chuck Eddy: Moderately funky factory clanking and zoo sound effects and bass throbbing and noodle doodles, not entirely negated by a singer who refuses to enunciate or project his voice. If his woman walked out, which seems to be the case though damned if I’m gonna strain my hearing to make sure, you’d think it might inspire him to express emotion of some sort. As is, I’m on her side.
[6]

Iain Forrester: A slice of darkness leaning towards dance without committing, which makes a rather bad first impression through overwhelming timidity. There’s a lot of well timed textural variation to it, though, and once it picks up, as the interplay between yomping bass and fire alarm bell kicks in, it never looks back.
[7]

Michaelangelo Matos: This one kept surprising me as it went. It shouldn’t have, since a shifting landscape is one of Dan Snaith’s specialties, but I didn’t expect so many little parts to come parading past. It doesn’t mean I love all the parts: his wispy voice grows on me, but it takes a while, and the looped sitar twang that runs through the beginning and end can be irritating. But the touches betray a sure sense that the collages add up to something that I fully anticipating loving more on the album than in isolation.
[7]

Matt Cibula: I have a lot of things to say about this Art-of-Noise-y jam, but none of them are better than “femaledeity” on YouTube: “is it? really a knob at 0:13?”
[7]

7 blergs » Wednesday, March 3rd, 2010 7:30 pm