Ronson’s chum invites a whole host of comparisons from us…

[Video][Myspace]
[3.44]

Edward Okulicz: A man who thinks he has the world’s best, most soulful voice sings a complete and utter shell of a song with a deliberately retro muffle and absolutely no believability whatsoever.
[3]

Martin Kavka: There’s a lot to tempt one to hate this song with the passion of a thousand burning nuns — Merriweather overemotes here like the most mediocre of Simon Cowell’s weekly prey, and the fade and then buildup of the strings in the song’s final minute is formulaic. Still, I don’t mind overemoting — even yelping at 2:53 — in the midst of a break-up song as wrenching as this. And the melody is to die for.
[8]

Hillary Brown: The production’s actually really nice on everything but Merriweather’s icky, whine-rock voice, which comes close to ruining this otherwise totally pleasant acousti-jam.
[4]

Martin Skidmore: Post Blount and Morrison, I have little tolerance for this kind of thing. This is not at all like Stop Me, in case you were thinking it might be.
[4]

Ian Mathers: Merriweather’s milquetoast, post-Once mewling is so infuriating that I can’t be bothered to try and parse out what the hell “you took something perfect and painted it red” means, so I’m just going to assume it’s as stupid as the rest of this sub-sub-sub-Coldplay piece of bullshit.
[0]

Joseph McCombs: A heartfelt, if somewhat tepid, ballad that could have been a Robbie Williams album track at the turn of this decade. I didn’t need such a thing, and I like Robbie.
[5]

David Raposa: Dear Daniel: please take this bathetic DeBurghian paint-by-numbers garbage and shove it up whatever hole that farting sound you call “singing” came from.
[0]

Alex Ostroff: Do we really need a second-tier Gavin DeGraw? Opening fingerpickings remind me of Nick Drake’s version of “Don’t Think Twice”, promisingly. After that, Mark Ronson’s latest pet project heads along a James Blunt-esque trajectory: second whine to the right, and straight on ’til melodrama. The lisp and weird vocal affectations evoke another vaguely rootsy singer with an unbearable voice, but I cannot for the life of me place who it is. Unnecessary strings, final chorus caterwauling, and so much “sincerity” add up to singer-songwriter by the numbers. We deserve better.
[2]

Erika Villani: It’s inoffensive and all, but we already have a OneRepublic. Do we really need another?
[5]

After 70-gajillion leaks, Cassie finally puts out a proper single – and guess who’s dropped by to wish her luck…

[Video][Myspace]
[6.23]

Alex Ostroff: On first listen, this felt underwhelming and slight. THIS was Cassie’s lead single? After a year’s worth of leaks better than most things on pop radio? But insubstantial though it may seem, Must Be Love seeps into your mind. The guitar is warm and summery, and the triangle/bells are light but insistent in the background, while Cassie glides effortlessly above it all. The vibe is classic 90s Bad Boy, as evoked by Diddy’s return to his original moniker (although his presence is wholly unnecessary). In other circumstances, this would merit a 10, but Cassie can and has done better. If her sophomore album is ever going to be actually released, she needs to do better than just ‘great’.
[9]

Frank Kogan: The percussion suggests an outdoor ambiance, half-busy, like a market or a street cafe, Diddy just kind of genially there, representing the mundane, Cassie showing up and her dreamy presence being as inexplicably powerful as always.
[8]

Al Shipley: Worse singers have sounded better than Cassie, so let’s not get hung up on her chops like that’s the only problem. Whoever is patching her performance together in ProTools can’t seem to make line 1 from take 6 sound natural next to line 2 from take 17, and isn’t making much of an effort to layer her voice into faux-harmony. And she could still have saved it all if she had the slightest ability to emote, but let there never be said there’s no difference between a model and an actress.
[3]

John M. Cunningham: Cassie’s never been a particularly showy singer, probably because she has little to show, but she uses her vocal limitations to her advantage: everything I’ve heard from her is suffused with this vulnerable intimacy that draws me in, and when she does break out of her narrow range, it’s more dramatic than if she’d been doing scale runs the entire time. At the same time, this puts the onus on the rest of the track to sparkle, and though the warm Spanish guitar and hushed cafe clatter here set a seductive mood, it feels less well-crafted than her previous singles. Not to mention that Diddy’s verses are awfully extraneous.
[6]

Alex Macpherson: The late-night languor of delicate Spanish guitars and dusty crackles suits the compelling stillness of her voice to a tee, and as ever the magic is in the minutiae: those multitracked vocals at the end! Diddy’s “Bad Boy turned good” guest verses, meanwhile, what with their tortured “all through my pain, how could it be you?” angle amid references to Cannes and beaches made of white diamonds, are tantalisingly promising with regards to his imminent Last Train To Paris concept album.
[8]

Dave Moore: Mario Winans’s lovely Ryan Leslie-esque loop — super-smooth jazzy acoustic guitar chords w/ flamenco flourishes and a distant clanging — helps a gaggle of Cassies float through the song in all their entrancing waify majesty. But Jesus, Diddy, just STEP AWAY FROM THE SINGLE.
[6]

Martin Skidmore: A version of this breathtakingly lovely single without Diddy (or with someone who can suit the song better – I can imagine Prince Be of PM Dawn on this) would very probably get a 10 from me. Cassie enters a while in, small and subtle and sweet, her voice trembling up and down gorgeously, the music quietly tinkling, the very restrained backing vocals creating a swaying tonal watercolour wash. When Diddy is away this is magically, gently, swooningly beautiful, and I absolutely adore it. I can’t remember the last time I resented a guest rapper so much.
[8]

David Raposa: Love the production, love Cassie’s state-of-the-art singing on the chorus and in the background, but someone please remix this thing and dump the verses. Especially Diddy’s handiwork — whoever’s ghostwriting for him on this track must’ve also written the awful slab of street knowledge Farnsworth Bentley dispenses in this PSA.
[5]

Ian Mathers: Well, Diddy almost ruins things with the lines everyone is going to quote (“every passionate kiss blows my mind like a terrorist”), but this is fucking lovely enough that it doesn’t really matter, all circumspect Spanish guitar fillips and triangle spangles. Cassie remains a singer who lives and dies by her production, but on her really good songs (“Me & U,” obviously, but also “Just Friends” and “Is It You?”) she meshes with it well enough you wouldn’t want a more extroverted singer, and that’s especially true here, her most minimalist single since “Me & U” (although this is lush instead of stark). Now someone fetch us a Diddy-less edit.
[8]

Hillary Brown: Rather classy in a sort of Q-Tip vein (and why do LP sound effects equal fancy, anyway?), and Diddy manages to stay back for the most part, plus it’s got a hint of Rich Harrison in the cowbell rhythms, but it’s more of a groove than a bang, and, if I have to choose, I want the explosions and the hooks.
[5]

Jonathan Bradley: Cassie isn’t one for dominating an instrumental, but on “Must Be Love” she seems to sink even farther into the background than usual. In this case, she can afford to. This beat is quite a surprise; a spare and anomalously grimy rattler that has more in common with RZA’s haunted soundscapes than anything going on in R&B at the moment. Of course, it’s wasted on Diddy, a rapper who can deliver an affable verse, but usually doesn’t. I would have loved to hear Ghostface or Raekwon occupying the guest spot, but I guess a strong rapper would have made the supposed leading woman even more forgettable.
[6]

Martin Kavka: How many other blurbers successfully resisted the urge to include “must be hate”? Diddy’s rap is worse than his usual poor showing, but that bell rhythm in the background is so insufferable and oppressive in its constancy that I ended up dreaming an entire video centered on Cassie screeching at the boys ’round the campfire, letting them know that grub’s on.
[1]

Erika Villani: Diddy still can’t rap, Cassie still can’t muster up a personality, and the chorus is nothing more than the world’s stupidest couplet: “I know this can’t be love / but baby, this must be love.” But then there are those ‘90s touches – vinyl pops and a muffled thump of a beat – and that summery guitar, and Cassie harmonizing with herself, and I’m kind of hoping this will be all over the radio all summer long. I know this can’t be a good song, but baby, this must be a good song.
[8]

And this year’s shittily-coiffured American rock success story is…

[Video][Website]
[4.75]

Ian Mathers: Dude, you are far too old to be spending three and a half minutes on this teenage bullshit. Just start wearing a t-shirt that says “Ask Me About My Parents’ Divorce,” it’ll get you the attention you want.
[2]

Al Shipley: Shinedown’s always been kind of an anonymous rock radio staple along the lines of Three Days Grace, constantly racking up hits but never crossing over to the big money (and big hate) reserved for, say, Nickelback. “Second Chance” is their big play for the cheap seats, though, and it’s surprisingly effective; the breakdown before the last chorus is massive, and cheesy fist-pumping nonsense like “tell my mother, tell my father” and “I’m not angry, I’M JUST SAYING” is insanely fun to belt along with, at least the first 200 times. I think I’m well past 300 at this point, though.
[8]

Dave Moore: Shinedown have figured out how to make lots of people wave cell phones in the air. This is not a skill that makes them deserving of much distinction, but I did unconsciously start to sway a little, so points for effort.
[3]

Iain Mew: I was already taking against this as typical overwrought American MOR rock bullshit (and don’t Take That achieve what this is going far much better now?). Then the Halley’s Comet bit and superfluous strings started giving me flashbacks to “Drops of Jupiter”. Brrr.
[1]

Martin Skidmore: Actually, this is a particularly good example of its kind, mostly not oversung, with a tune and a singer who can sing, and some restraint and even subtlety in the music. It’s not my thing, but it does its job very well.
[6]

David Raposa: That a vocalist can simultaneously remind me of the frontbros for Collective Soul, Nickelback, and *shudder* Puddle of Mudd, and not make me completely lose my shit and/or lunch must mean the flourinated water is doing its job. As far as shameless clenched-fist Cowell-baiting string-bowing pseudo-anthems of the rock persuasion go, this ain’t so bad — it’s properly macho, but in a family-friendly way. Not butch enough for win-or-go-home sports promos, but perfect for downtrodden montage sequences featuring people in various states of distress & buyers’ remorse. And in other news, I think I actually like this dopey thing.
[7]

Martin Kavka: Now that Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers have officially entered Geezerville, Northern Florida now gets another band to claim as its darlings. This has hit #1 on the US rock charts, and I can see why. This has passionately delivered vocals, guitars and strings mixed equally forward, and a lyric about leaving home that’s perfectly designed for those radio listeners who want to leave their communities but don’t have the wherewithal to actually do so. It doesn’t transcend its genre, but I don’t know whether that’s reason to penalize it.
[7]

Hillary Brown: You know, if this were an Avril Lavigne song, I’d probably love it. But it’s not…
[4]

She’s a different person, turned her world around…

[Video][Website]
[4.33]

Alex Macpherson: In which Mandy Moore thins her lips, pinches her voice and wins third prize at her local Reese Witherspoon impersonator competition.
[3]

Erika Villani: Back when she was fighting to establish herself as a Serious Artist Who Writes Serious Music, all Mandy Moore talked about was how much she hated “Candy,” calling it “a song with no meaning at all,” and asking, “How do you miss someone like candy?” I guess “I Could Break Your Heart Any Day of the Week” is the best we can expect from a woman who can’t understand a simple simile — for a song that’s ostensibly about all the ways she could break you, it’s curiously devoid of power or creativity. Mandy repeats the titular line twelve times, and lists the days of the week another three, just in case we weren’t clear on the meaning of “any day of the week.” Each time she runs through the days, she wraps it up with “Sunday rolls around, but that’s another story — it gets a little boring.” So does this song.
[1]

Briony Edwards: Since when does simply listing the days of the week pass as an acceptable chorus?
[3]

Al Shipley: Any song with lyrics that repeat a title this long this many times basically shouldn’t have ever made it past the notebook stage.
[2]

Dave Moore: Mandy…it’s complicated. I think disowning “Candy” was stupid, but you’re not bad as a lite pseudo-country singer/songwriter. I don’t want to dislike you on principle. But your career trajectory is pretty much on a parallel universe track with Melissa Lefton, who, after her Matrix-produced teenpop album was shelved in 2001, eventually dusted herself off and returned as half of an un-googleable, arch sunshine pop duo. See, after failing to take off, and without the extra step of deliberately burning all of her bridges on some artiste bullshit, she became fairly obscure and is pleasant enough if you manage to find her. She is you with bad luck. So kudos on the sunshine, and I trust that your Twitter is literate, but what you call integrity I call a moderately pleasant CD Baby discovery.
[4]

Martin Skidmore: Oddly this sounds like it could have been recorded by an American pop-rock act before she was born (25 years ago). It’s a neat enough song, and she performs it well, with total confidence, but the style didn’t do much for me way back then, and it still doesn’t.
[6]

Martin Kavka: This track, with its tinny keyboards, handclaps, and warm vocals could have appeared on Fleetwood Mac’s _Tusk_. Still, it’s obvious that Moore wants to be a feminist manifesto (women were *authentic* back in that decade, etc etc etc), but repeated listens don’t make this anything more than a meringue, more typical of the teen-pop from which Moore will spend the rest of her career fleeing.
[6]

David Raposa: On one hand, it’s pretty neat that the first single from Mandy Moore: Unleashed (with help from a member of the Candy Butchers I mean the co-writer of the songs from Walk Hard) sounds a lot like an outtake one of her proto-power-pop idols left on some dusty studio shelf. But then there’s a reason they’d shelve this awkward mish-mash of cutesy fuck-off lyrics, Fleetwood Mac harmonies, & clavinet boogie-woogie. Of course, it’s these very same WTF qualities that make “Break Your Heart” a perfect like-it-or-lump-it release. If she’s looking to burn any remaining bridges between her pre-fab pop past and the decidedly different drum she’s now beating, consider that mission accomplished. Here’s hoping she actually gets good at this.
[5]

Jonathan Bradley: Moore explains she can break your heart at exactly the time the title suggests, but it’s just a pop construct; this has “Steal My Sunshine” levels of cheeriness. It’s the sort of music that gets made in boom times, not this era of the Great Recession. So, a welcome distraction, right? Well, no: “I Can Break Your Heart…” makes all the right moves, but it has more of the idea of being a great pop song than actually achieving great pop. Its moves are too carefully deployed for me to really get carried away.
[6]

Frank Kogan: This cocktease of a song would be fine if belted out by some country cutie like Sarah Johns or Ashton Shepherd, or given passive aggression by a shy Scando like Marit Larsen, or even with the bitter little twists of the Mandy Moore of “Nothing That You Are,” but the Mandy on this one just doesn’t seem up to breaking anything. Only getting points for the song, not the singing.
[4]

Ian Mathers: There’s an odd lilt in Moore’s voice when she sings the title that puts me in mind of Scandinavian popsters (Marit Larsen, etc.), which is fitting enough as the rest of the song sounds like Sondre Lerche. Unfortunately, I’ve always found Lerche boring.
[6]

Edward Okulicz: Oh Mandy, you have such a pretty voice and such exquisite taste (though not in men). But as a songwriter, you lack something. Your lyrics miss the mark – cutesy and clumsy, not clever. Mike Viola is a great choice of collaborator, and this sounds like a good Candy Butchers song, but something’s missing that would drive this past pleasant. It’s sad, but your voice was just better suited to the fluffy pop stuff you hate – Mandy Moore, you are the accountant who dreams of being a lion tamer.
[6]

O mon dieu elles sont de retou-urrr…

[Video][Website]
[6.27]

Dave Moore: Another bad sign for Nina Sky: they sound much better singing a generic chorus hook on a twinkling fake-guitar-spiked electro tune whose best verses are in French.
[7]

Ian Mathers: Other than some desultory French verses, this may as well be a Nina Sky song. And I’m perfectly okay with that.
[7]

Erika Villani: You know how sometimes you go out dancing, and when you get to the club you discover it’s ’80s Night, and you have a few shots, and you dance to some ’80s dance-pop divas whose songs you sort of recognize but whose names you never knew, and you have a few more shots, and you dance to a few more songs, and after a while all those nameless, faceless, vaguely retro dance hits all start to sound the same? That is exactly what this song is like.
[4]

Martin Kavka: Algerian-French singer goes to NYC, hooks up with Puerto Rican twins, records fabulous immigrants-make-it-in-the-big-city-by-having-sex anthem. This isn’t quite your standard immigrant story, is it? I imagine that Anzia Yezierska (Bread Givers) would be spinning in her grave if she heard this. But maybe she’d be dancing.
[9]

Frank Kogan: French Internet sensation nods off during recording session; coupla Ninas try to coax her awake, fail. Melody’s pang goes to waste.
[5]

Alex Macpherson: Again, Nina Sky bring their vague yearning to bear on their global pop missions; and on “Celle Qu’il Te Faut”, they may well have found their French counterpart in Kenza Farah, who also manages to convey much more emotion than should be possible in her prettily thin tones. The song itself seems to want to demand slightly more from its performers, what with its strong melody and all, but they are admirably resolute in their abstracted drift.
[7]

David Raposa: Maybe it’s just the jingo in me, or I’m jonesin’ for some Nina Sky like nobody’s business. That said, the duo’s all-too-brief cameo (both in the video and in the actual tune) casts a large enough shadow to turn Kenza Farah into a supporting cast member in her own song. Granted, if Ms. Farah actually did more than just pleasantly coo some Francais while smiling pleasantly into the camera and being all innocuously pleasant, she’d probably stand out more. In her own song.
[6]

Joseph McCombs: Rhythmically picking up where Nelly Furtado left off a couple of years ago, this “Say It Right Pt. 2” sells the ladies short: nothing against mindless physical attraction, but “if you’re looking for a girl, I can be the one tonight” is hardly a sterling recommendation for either party. Lacking any parlez to my francais, I can’t guess whether they ever get more descriptive of their skill set as potential ones tonight – but vaguely pleasant though this is, there’s nothing here that makes me want to find out.
[4]

W.B. Swygart: So the lyrics are perhaps not entirely inspired, and the video direction is worryingly easy to imagine: “Right, you’re standing next to the wall. Now sway a bit. Excellent. OK, now you’re next to a different wall, but now it’s night-time, so do a bit of pointing.” But this is about ease, and this is about cool, and all involved know not to spoil that by trying too hard. When Kenza’s intonation of “la vie” loops and spirals off into the backing, fuzzing and fuzzing til it’s practically a keytar, it sounds absolutely right. They could be the one tonight, but they’re hardly gonna cry themselves to sleep if they ain’t.
[8]

Additional Scores

Briony Edwards: [6]
Martin Skidmore: [6]

Oh mah gawd they’re back agai-een…

[Video][Myspace]
[6.91]

Alex Macpherson: Nina Sky have one default mode – a vague, yearning drift which enables them to make even single-line pottymouth choruses like “I’m on some bullshit, fuck what ya heard” sounds impossibly pretty. Luckily, it’s an irresistible one, and it’s the reason why what seems like a trifle initially proves somewhat addictive over several plays. The wonderfully restless backing helps, too: insectile beats twitch and scurry, starburst synths twinkle and every so often, whooshing sounds arc across the beat like planes in the desert sky.
[7]

Dave Moore: For a group that’s been waiting for a proper solo release as long as Nina Sky (whom I didn’t know I knew already from “Oye Mi Canto”), this is kind of disappointing, a passable but unremarkable album-filler-ish track whose most notable feature is not just one but two radio-unfriendly words in the chorus (shock!). What would they even call the radio edit?
[4]

Al Shipley: Maybe I’m just a sucker for pretty girls talking dirty, but I’ll never get tired of R&B songs that take not just the sound but also the explicit vocabulary from hip hop.
[6]

Martin Kavka: Can I be the first to vote this the song of the summer? It makes me feel old: does “I’m on some bullshit” mean that the Nina Sky twins are lying when they’re dissing this guy? Does it mean that their bullshit detectors have gone off on what the guy is saying? It makes me feel young: it must be the woodblock in the percussion track. It makes me want to hide behind my public poses. It makes me want to call everyone out and myself for hiding. It makes me want to grow up.
[10]

David Raposa: The bullshit, in this case, being some electro Lisette Melendez freestyle tip that’s both unexpected and totally fantastic. It doesn’t sound like what most folks remember from Nina Sky, but since it’s been FOUR GODDAMN YEARS since “Move Ya Body,” that’s to be expected. If anything, I’d say this is much, much better.
[9]

Briony Edwards: Anyone who references YouTube in their lyrics deserves heralding and reprimanding in equal measure. Nina Sky get away with it because this song delivers on so many other levels. Their voices are wonderful, and the harmonies sad, meaning the whole thing retains a very strong sense of melancholy which reverberates through the whole track. Plus, it kind of sounds like the Spice Girl’s “Viva Forever”, which will never be a bad thing.
[8]

Edward Okulicz: Not as bad as it wants to be or as good as it should be; forceful wasn’t these girls’ forte, and while I can’t expect everything they do to have their old hit’s effortless hypnotism, this tries three times as hard and achieves one third as much.
[4]

Ian Mathers: Wait, I’m confused – is it her (them?) or him that is on some of the titular bullshit? And what is it that we’ve heard that we are supposed to fuck? That she’s on some bullshit, or that she still has feelings for him, or what? Ah, who cares. That was a good drum break. It’s so nice to have them back.
[8]

Additional Scores

Hillary Brown: [5]
Michaelangelo Matos: [6]
Martin Skidmore: [9]

Mmm, classy…

[Video][Myspace]
[6.83]

Martin Skidmore: I was first struck by her in guest appearances on numbers by Nas and The Game, and by now I think she could become one of the first genuinely great singers of the century. This is smooth and stylish R&B, but the production seems a touch off – the beats are rather perfunctory at times, and she could have been a little further forward in the mix a lot of the time. The song is kind of ordinary, but there are moments when she sounds absolutely glorious, on the quietest and most intense parts especially.
[8]

Jonathan Bradley: I know she’s the go-to singer for rap hooks, and this instrumental has a rather intriguing emptiness, but I really can’t get over her atonal delivery. Even if the tune were stronger than it is, the singing would be terribly distracting.
[4]

Al Shipley: Ne-Yo has a knack for writing songs for female vocalists that allow them to inhabit the lyric and make it their own, and I rarely wonder what he’d sound like singing those songs. But I’ve never been a fan of Michele’s retro vocal style, which is so stylized as to border on kewpie baby talk, and for once I’m wishing the writer had kept it for himself.
[3]

Martin Kavka: Ne-Yo’s songwriting skills are improving at an exponential pace. This would have been a worldwide smash for Dionne Warwick, and Michele and Ne-Yo’s partner Chuck Harmony do a great job of not making it sound too anachronistic. Best part: the way that Michele moans “girlfriend” as if having that status with someone were more important to her than breathing.
[9]

Jordan Sargent: If there’s a knock on Ne-Yo, it’s that sometimes he can come off as almost sickeningly mannered. “Epiphany,” sadly, falls into that trap. It builds a runway out of a unique beat and a slyly catchy chorus, but right when you want it to take off it just… doesn’t.
[6]

Michaelangelo Matos: I’m sure someone out there is already making a case for her as the New Face of Real Soul or something, and that’s fine, but what I like about this is how stagy it is, from filtered spoken beginning to the perfect clop of the congas (despite the presence of a kick and hi-hat, you never hear drums here, just percussion) to piano chords that make me wonder what Kiki & Herb might do with it. The chorus is as chick-flick as “Irreplaceable”, but more restrained. At least until the bridge, where she gets to emote — and looses the tautness that is the track’s greatest strength.
[7]

Alex Ostroff: Lazy and languid, the piano takes its time, strutting throughout the piece. Chrisette announces at the beginning “…and then it comes to me, like an epiphany,” and her vocals unfold gradually over the course of the song, as she, and we, slowly realize what she has to do. Rarely melodramatic, but stately and assured, they fit the tone perfectly. Her pronunciation is sometimes strangely affected, a la Janelle Monae, but that’s usually a good thing in my books. Majestic.
[9]

Alex Macpherson: Chrisette Michele says it’s an epiphany, but it feels more like a slow, creeping realisation; as she outlines all the little things that she already knew, wistfulness creeps into her regret. You can hear her voice waver – “just about” over someone is nowhere near being over them – and you feel it’s touch and go whether she’ll actually walk away. Heartbreaking.
[8]

Ian Mathers: Nicely deployed woodblock and electric piano aside, the real appeal of “Epiphany” is the slow-dawning joy in Chrisette’s voice as she, in Dan Savage’s phrase, Dumps The Motherfucker Already. It’s more apparent when you watch the video, but this is no woe-is-me, now-I’m-single lament – the chorus is more mocking/savage than sad, and you get the definite impression that it really is his loss, not hers.
[7]

Additional Scores

Hillary Brown: [6]
Iain Mew: [8]
David Raposa: [7]

Going off the band name, what do you think they might sound like? Yes, that’s right…

[Video][Website]
[6.43]

Jonathan Bradley: As transparent as their Sarah Records costumes are, The Pains of Being Pure at Heart sure know how to put a tune together. This is as uplifting, buoyant and altogether bewitching as, well, those Sarah Records tunes of days past. Over the length of an album such imitation becomes alienating, but at little more than four minutes, it would take a harder heart than mine to deny the demure melodicism on display here.
[8]

Alex Macpherson: “Don’t check me out, don’t check me out,” whines our passive-aggressive antihero, having spent three minutes reminding us about some particularly grim, regrettable library sex. OK then!
[1]

Keane Tzong: The super-lo-fi jangliness of it all drowns out the pretty amazing lyrics. I mean, it’s a song about fucking in a library, wouldn’t you want people to focus on your wordplay? Luckily, the female vocal in the chorus, and then later again toward the end of the song, makes up for any issues I might have had with the song’s production values. Bonus points for punning “don’t check me out.”
[8]

Iain Mew: I’m struggling to think of anything as shoegazey as this that I’ve ever actually disliked. Covering a song in lovely warm fuzz is a very effective way of smoothing over any weaknesses. The flipside is that, if you aren’t careful, it does the same for anything that would make the song stand out in a good way.
[5]

Martin Skidmore: “I’m really sorry, guys, but we stopped accepting submissions for C86 quite a long time ago. And in all honesty, do you really think you deserve the slots we gave to the likes of Mighty Mighty or the Close Lobsters?”
[2]

Alex Wisgard: The Pains of Being Pure at Heart are far and away the best of the current new wave of hipster-approved indiepop bands coming out of America at the moment because, rather than relying on reverb and a snotty attitude alone (whoever described Vivian Girls as “The Shaggs for the Pitchfork generation” deserves a medal), they just write really wonderful pop music. “Young Adult Friction” employs every twee-ché imagineable – fey boy/girl vocals, relentless jangle’n’fuzz, lyrics about sweets, drugs and libraries – but there’s enough wide-eyed enthusiasm and, most importantly, plenty of tunes back it up, making songs like this more than an obvious xerox of the class of ’86. The Pains of Being Pure at Heart are doing nothing new but, sweet Amelia’s cardigan, are they doing it well.
[9]

Michaelangelo Matos: I really didn’t expect to like this so much — I never expect to like rudimentary indie-pop. It’s pretty easy to mock. And then — not always, but often enough, or at least when it’s as enthusiastically splashy as this — I wind up giving in. Or, in this case, just playing it mindlessly over and over again, long past any obligation/need to do so.
[8]

Hillary Brown: Jangly, sweet, and tart, like a basket full of kumquats being delivered via pogo stick.
[7]

David Raposa: The tune’s got enough pep in its strummy step to keep my interest, while also making me wish more twe(e)rps like POBPAH, past and present, bothered to fill their tanks with hi-grade octane. I’m also digging the anachronistic rinky-dink organ stabs, and the girl vocal accents. But this track really comes into focus for me when the mild-mannered lead singer starts singing, “Don’t check me ow-ah-ow-out,” over and over. What starts off as a coy hard-to-get come-on turns into an infectious rallying cry for introverts and shut-ins that even the coolest of kids can sing along with as well.
[9]

Jordan Sargent: “Young Adult Friction” is missing a huge hook, but when you’re trying to recreate ’80s indie rock, atmosphere is almost as important, and TPOBPAH hit that dead on. The guitars have a confident propulsion and that perfectly glistening jangle, resulting in a song that proves that there are still kids who know how to do an homage correctly.
[8]

John M. Cunningham: There’s no use denying that the Pains of Being Pure at Heart is derivative as hell, specifically of late ’80s UK jangle-pop and shoegazer bands, but as with the similarly derided Strokes and Interpol, I tend not to mind when the result is so self-assured and, in the case of “Young Adult Friction,” joyful in its primitiveness.
[7]

Additional Scores

Martin Kavka: [6]
Ian Mathers: [6]
Alex Ostroff: [6]

One of those cases where the logo is prettier than the band…

[Video][Myspace]
[6.13]

Iain Mew: As a metaphor, mere raindrops don’t really do justice here. Each high is more like a new onrushing wave of sound and melody, with the distant chimes falling into the gaps acting as an anticipation-building counterpoint. The weedy vocalist initially sounds like being a sticking point, but since he just gets washed along by everything else too it’s not much of one.
[8]

Renato Pagnani: There’s a lot going on, but all the individual parts work together toward a unified goal, rather than duke it out amongst each other. The song still feels huge, just not the kind of huge that’s bursting at the seams, but the kind that emerges when a great melody’s given proper room to breathe, something Basement Jaxx, when they’re on their game, do better than anyone else. Sure, the lyrics are essentially a vehicle for the Buxton’s deliciously dramatic man-diva vocals and that massive chorus, but that’s the entire point. “Raindrops” hits in four minutes the sort of emotional sweetspot that most dance acts require (at minimum) eight to find, and that’s always been the Jaxx’s greatest strength.
[8]

Alex Ostroff: Constantly morphing production, each bit of it better than the last. Starts off with a sitar leading into guitar fuzz and pan flutes before exploding into echoey house for the verses. By the time the chorus hits, “Raindrops” explodes into a joyous synthy vocoder dance party. The bridge cribs the arpeggios from Daft Punk’s Aerodynamic and then dissipates into music box fragility and guitar solos. Derivative, but fun enough to overcome even the cringeworthy “your moisture drips upon my lips, just like a waterfall straight through the heart of me.”
[7]

David Raposa: I know saying a Basement Jaxx track is “too much” is like Salieri hating on Mozart, but I just cannot get with this. And, yes, I know this is a personal problem, and will start medicating immediately.
[6]

Hillary Brown: Docked a couple of points for unexpected grossness in the lyrics that sneaks up on one, but mostly this is a burst of cheery chaos, a reminder that Basement Jaxx can make dance music out of anything, even a beginning that sounds like Beat Happening.
[8]

Martin Kavka: Basement Jaxx seem to have placed all of their previous singles in a blender. One would think that this would make this track their best single ever; instead, it just engenders a desire to turn this off and listen to their greatest hits.
[5]

Michaelangelo Matos: It’s hard to hate outright, but since I still love the first three albums unreservedly, and liked Crazy Itch Radio, “hard to hate” is the most pernicious kind of faint praise. I can’t even imagine it hitting me upside the head on a dance floor, and not just because I almost never go out dancing anymore, or because it’s overcooked — it gains definition with repeat plays, but not enough. It’s aimed solidly at radio (which kind is another question), but buries its hooks.
[6]

Alex Macpherson: The beat plods, a vocal flails hither and thither in vain search of a hook to sing, and a handful of notes trudge wearily up and down the scale, forced into acting as though they constituted the sort of gigantic riff that Basement Jaxx used to pump out effortlessly. Every so often the track pretends it has build-ups and breakdowns, to no avail, because there is fundamentally nothing to show here.
[2]

Edward Okulicz: This is great music for thinking vaguely about the idea of dancing.
[3]

Jonathan Bradley: “Raindrops” knows it wants to sound like its chart-topping, floor-filling dance music contemporaries — you know, the DJ-someone-helmed type that jam as many skimpily clad women into their videos as possible — but it never truly succumbs to the thrilling release of its less cerebral brethren. This is an odd plea to make of the duo responsible for “Where’s Your Head At”, but couldn’t this have been a little stupider?
[5]

Additional Scores

John M. Cunningham: [8]
Ian Mathers: [6]
Jordan Sargent: [8]
Martin Skidmore: [5]
Keane Tzong: [7]

Quirky Swede. Yes, another one…

[Video][Website]
[5.62]

Iain Mew: I have a soft spot for Maia mainly thanks to her work with Hello Saferide (that’s her on the lump-in-the-throat ending to “Parenting Never Ends”, which affected me like nothing else in 2008). “South Again” is great in its own right though, a perfectly captured snapshot of frustration adorned with pirrouetting strings and whipcrack percussion. That it has the confidence to end so soon, message imparted, makes it all the more tempting to play again right away.
[8]

Jonathan Bradley: “South Again” begins light, with fanciful Owen Pallett-gone-Nordic arrangements, but it settles heavy in its refrain. “It’s not that I don’t love you, I’m so sorry,” Hirasawa sings with a resigned sigh, “but I’m happier somewhere else.” The flighty turbulence of her verse resolves into a deep and straightforward sorrow that cognizant diversions over geography and piano-playing cannot salve. If this were merely quirky, it would be intolerable, but Hirasawa finds a bit of emotional tug in the slowly ebbing strings to anchor her musical whimsy.
[8]

Hazel Robinson: A bloody awful mess with no apparent tune but lots of posturing, whose constituent parts all seem innocent of their involvement, bar the fuck-awful cutesy singing.
[2]

Martin Skidmore: I like the foregrounded strings on this, but they barely hold together a quirky confusion of a track, which sounds like a few different songs stitched together rather unconvincingly.
[4]

Erika Villani: Manages to escape hooklessness by just being a hook, as Maia conflates restlessness in a relationship with wanderlust, over instruments that can’t seem to settle down either: running keys and staccato strings, thunderous drums, handclaps. When it finally gives way to apologies and softness and shimmering cymbals, it’s just a parting gift: she may do her best here in the west, but she’s already told us her heart is everywhere else.
[9]

Ian Mathers: This has a nicely compact structure, and very well used instrumentation; most songs that use piano, strings and upright bass sound more offputtingly showy than “South Again” does. And as befitting an Hello Saferide associate, she takes a lyrical conceit that ought to be annoying and makes it kind of work. But while Hirasawa avoids any major mistakes, she also doesn’t hit any real highs – “South Again” feels a bit like it’s still looking for a chorus, or maybe a point.
[6]

Rodney J. Greene: The Casio tinkle and Hirasawa’s terrible phrasing suck, but the the way this song keeps building up to and breaking down from gargantuan nothings is beyond irksome.
[1]

Michaelangelo Matos: College-radio art-pop as a species of formula as by-the-numbers as any “ft. Akon” track you want to name.
[4]

Dave Moore: For a song that’s essentially about goofing off, this one’s intense — a precisely layered tango, you can hear the bow against the cello strings and the resonance of the plucked bass. At some point underwater drums and lingering cymbals add a percussive roll, and above it all Hirasawa channels the angst of a much less frivolous song. The whole thing combines into a series of delightful micro-moments of that restless search for happiness Elsewhere, the insistent ticking of time hovering constantly as you soak in the countryside, play around on someone else’s piano, all with the nagging feeling that you should be doing something else — somewhere else — that’s more important. Home is where the heart is, but sometimes you’re sick of “heart” and you wanna go look at cows. (Maybe she and her boyfriend need to go to a bed and breakfast for a few days.)
[9]

David Raposa: Feist-y as all get-out, “South Again” manages to squeeze a lot into its 135 seconds, including some spry piano, whirling-dervish strings, hand claps, a little faux-drum bashing (quirky!), and even some crass production shenanigans — dig how those scratchy double-tracked vocals in the verses get the 70MM soft-focus close-up on the chorus! The only thing missing from this track is more of it. With no space or room for anything to breathe, the song sounds remarkably claustrophobic. Given Hirasawa is singing about being anywhere but where she is, I’m sure this effect is intentional, and it’s a remarkable marriage of form and function. But the ultimate result of this admirable attention to detail is a track that I appreciate more than I actually enjoy.
[6]

Hillary Brown: Perhaps the equivalent of an oompa loompa in its shortness and strangeness, Maia Hirasawa’s song swoops around with Bjorky disregard for conventional song structure, but it’s oddly pleasant to listen to nonetheless.
[7]

Martin Kavka: I respect what Hirasawa’s trying to do in this song. She’s acting on a belief that authenticity is equivalent to sonic roughness, and so we get badly overtracked vocals, a string line that verges on scratchiness. She’s happier somewhere else than pop. Unfortunately, I doubt that there are other people there, and so her goal ironically seems to be to live in a vacuum.
[3]

Alex Ostroff: Swedish singer tangos her way through sweeping strings and plinkety pianos, heart torn between her lover and anywhere else. The vocals are affected and twee, somewhere in between Sarah Slean and Nelly McKay. Hirasawa has enough melodrama to pull it off adequately, but not enough power to avoid being submerged by the arrangement, which is gorgeous, fragile and seductive in equal measures. Despite insightful lyricism, it never quite gels with the music. A more dominating singer, like Shakira, could do, and has done, this style better.
[6]