Cheap medicine from Canada…

[Video][Website]
[3.83]

Martin Skidmore: Annoyingly plinky piano, plus the other smooth trappings, with Buble phoning in a performance of a wet and clumsily cliched song. I’ve never really got his appeal at all, I’m afraid.
[2]

Fergal O’Reilly: The previous incarnation of this website officially denounced Booble as the worst musical artist in the entire world for the years 2005-2007 after reacting unfavourably to some piece of insipid, slobbering dreck he released at the time. He’s far jauntier here, even having the audacity to bust out some entirely unearned middle eight/trucker’s chorus combo, but in the long run the switch from “comatose” to “actively annoying” seems potentially ill-advised. On top of that, his over-eager “I just can’t wait to shower somebody I haven’t met yet with vaguely sinister affection!!!” narrative also seems tragically destined to end in tears and/or the Sex Offender’s Register.
[2]

John Seroff: In which everybody’s favorite blandly expert Canuck Crooner pulls the ol’ “Hello My Future Girlfriend“/”Isn’t She Lovely”-as-TV-theme-song switcheroo. Beatles flourishes and grocery store pickups in the video notwithstanding, “Haven’t Met You Yet” plays less like a love song for that special gal and more like a bald shuck-and-jive for Anne Geddes-loving expectant mothers, militant anti-choice evangelicals and adopting gay couples alike. Ambiguity in the name of commercial success aside, hating this is like hating a puppy; Bublé’s specialty is in putting a silver lining on even the shiniest of rainbows and his honeyed voice is extra jim-dandy full of gumdrops and smiles here. You can almost picture the inevitable movie montage now: Jessica Alba looking confusedly at the instructions on the breast pump, Hugh Grant exasperatedly changing diapers, the both of them pacing with the crying child, a beatific Grant gently shushing Alba as they peer down at the sweetly sleeping bundle of joy. Awwww, cute. But I will never ever ever need to hear this again. “Half sluck,” indeed.
[4]

Alfred Soto: When my younger sister brought home his first album a few Thanksgivings ago I confused him for a Roger Whittaker type with better skin. Whether it’s Van Morrison, George Michael, or this number, he projects an enthusiasm that stops just short of callowness (like your sister’s handsome boyfriend charming your family on Thanksgiving, actually). Arguing the merits of this cutie’s albums is beside the point. He doesn’t care about interpreting these songs, he just likes them enough to wish he could interpret them, which is rather touching: after all, you and I feel the same about Van Morrison, George Michael, and this song, and we show as much when we sing karaoke. The worst thing I can say about him is that he reminds me of John Waite without a “Missing You” in his veins, but will work hard enough to raise hopes.
[5]

Hillary Brown: Sure, it makes The Wiggles look like The Misfits, but there’s a reason this stuff is so popular with your grandparents, and it’s not necessarily that they have terrible taste. Very Branson and not really that bad, either.
[6]

Martin Kavka: The kind of artist who exists to make dental work bearable: it’s not insignificant, but it’s nothing to swoon over. Nevertheless, when I watch the video and see him smile, I suddenly wonder whether I should quit my job to start stalking him. It’s not like he cares about his current girlfriend, that Argentine woman whose name is almost an anagram for “Alias: Pollution.” Why would he cast her in a video for a song about finding the right mate in the *future* unless he’s planning to dump her next week (for me! for me!)?
[6]

Anthony Easton: There is something manic about this song, that suggests a rabid false hope — which would be a stylistically interesting choice if there was any core of darkness or secrecy that was hidden.
[2]

Ian Mathers: There’s an implicit pathos to Bublé’s situation here: he’s resolutely optimistic, and never does the idea that he might never meet you cross his lips, but it lurks darkly in the song’s subtext, and even beyond that the naked dissatification with his situation and even just himself in lines like “baby, I know your love will change me” elevate this in ways the overstuffed arrangement and his kind of hammy vocals can’t. Still, I’d rather listen to a song that tackles the darkness hear head on (Will Young’s “All Time Love,” say) instead.
[6]

Kat Stevens: Just think of the constant stream of cheerful piano duets that would result if Michael ever got married to Sara Bareilles. They would populate the world with pleasant melodies and good-natured children, inspiring kindness, happiness and unconscious-yet-rhythmic side-to-side head bobbing wherever they went. Would that be such a bad thing?
[5]

Doug Robertson: You could record a fridge and still end up with something more valid and worthwhile than this pointless waste of plinks and plonks.
[1]

Anthony Miccio: I was under the impression this guy was a lite jazz crooner, so I’m going to assume this blandly boisterous piano-thumper is an attempt to freshen his audience with a VH1 crossover. Gave it a close listen just to make sure there wasn’t some Beautiful South wit I’d missed.
[4]

Matt Cibula: This song has a lot of nice elements to it, including the man’s undeniable vocal chops and the good old late-model-Tears-for-Fears-version-of-Beatles-horns. But it’s about as sexless as a tricycle and sappier than a tree in Vermont.
[3]

Nice young men…

[Video][Website]
[4.67]

Alex Macpherson: JLS’s success has been one of the few heartening developments in a dire year for UK pop: it should be mandatory for every generation of teenage girls to have an R&B boy band of their very own, and the neglect of this over the past decade has been a serious case of chart cruelty. JLS seem to have a tremendous understanding of the form – and the formula, which they execute to a tee. Puppy-dog pleading verses which feel as though they’re being sung specifically and genuinely to you and a lighters-aloft singalong chorus sung to you all, all set to – could it be? yes! – the ’90s R&B revival is upon us!
[8]

Doug Robertson: They’re a hard band to hate, even if they are little more than a slightly distorted photocopy of their own influences. There’s an exuberance and bounce that makes this surprisingly enjoyable, and at least they actually sound like they’re happy to be in love and will surf the endorphin rush for as long as is humanly possible. Of course, the whole thing is as superficial as a Heat-instigated romance and there’s not really anything whatsoever going on under the surface, but it still works, and even I’m not coldhearted enough to begrudge them this.
[6]

Melissa Bradshaw: It’s not as urban as “Beat Again”, but it’s naive, and sounds like the Backstreet Boys (but cuter and with swing). Plus they are all single. That must make it the perfect piece of manufactured puerile pop?
[8]

Kat Stevens: On the UK boyband ranking scale (Take That <——-> Northern Line), JLS currently rank below V and Phixx but above Bad Boys Inc and Damage (prior to this single they were nearer to A1 territory). However if they don’t do a ski chalet video with fluffy hoods and fake snow SHARPISH then they will end up underneath Upside Down. Avalanche optional.
[4]

John Seroff: Opening statement of disappointment at being fed watered-down formula. Brief description of cookie-cutter beats-‘n’-FX and sub-Radioactive Disney melody. Brusque dismissal of vapid lyrics and reality show singers in general. Wrap-up with snide joke about song and band name’s brevity hopefully setting the standard for future releases. Snappy parting comment. And even this boilerplate isn’t as generic as “Everybody in Love”.
[2]

Matt Cibula: This song makes me not want to be in love. Not sure if that’s what they were going for, exactly.
[2]

Martin Kavka: No one would ever accuse JLS of sexist machismo. But their simpering persona — like the faggotry of yore, but heterosexual — is equally sexist. To a tick-tock beat (they’re watching the clock until they’re alone no longer), they express their inability to cope with the fact that women might have lives independent of men. Their next single will no doubt be called “(I Love You) Barefoot And Pregnant.”
[1]

Anthony Miccio: It’s refreshing to hear an R&B group drop an earnest valentine that never once points crotchward, but if this had come out at any other time (with era-appropriate percussion) I doubt I would have taken it for anything more than benign cheese.
[6]

Martin Skidmore: Highly polished by JR Rotem, and completely limp. It’s a serviceable raising the arms and swaying number, sung moderately well, but I was sick of its saccharine feel before it had finished.
[3]

Alfred Soto: The post-Timbo beat and sub-Usher singing confused me. It’s called marketing.
[4]

Ian Mathers: This is blandly, solidly entertaining boy band stuff — JLS might as well be a proof-of-concept for the idea that the boy band form can still be productive, but just as they’re avoiding any major mistakes they’re not hitting any great heights. Equally hard to love or hate, pleasant while it’s here and forgotten swiftly after it’s finished.
[6]

Fergal O’Reilly: This is pleasant and well sung, but stops short of ever becoming actually exciting and gets stuck in a sort of trite, nothing-y middle ground, which is a shame because it sounds like a million bucks, or at least £650,000.
[6]

Just so you know – four songs go up today, and then three tomorrow…

[Website]
[5.90]

Martin Kavka: I went to London for the first time in 1992, and spent most of my time being quite surprised that it didn’t feel like the original version of this song. From Brixton to Bloomsbury and between, London has never felt like any one signifiable thing to me, just a whole bunch of disparate fragments. So I’m happy that Richard X has taken this overdetermined and overanalyzed track, and with a simple bassline, made it even slinkier and spanglier. It is — and always was — simply cosmopolitan.
[10]

Ramzy Alwakeel: Decade’s market leader in compressed electro takes on 1991 inadvertent high-class DIY anthem. The lead single from the Foxbase Beta remix project is a pleasant, highly uncontroversial listen, but I’m not sure that such an unashamed fanboy exercise really needs promo. If you saw Foxbase Alpha live, you’ll probably enjoy this pulsing, handclap-laden update. If you’re not a fairly comprehensive Saint Etienne fan, you literally won’t care.
[7]

Alex Macpherson: As artistically bankrupt as a Don’t Look Back concert or endlessly reissues of a band’s back catalogue, this exists for no purpose than to serve the nostalgia industry. Which wouldn’t grate so much — I never hate on people getting their paper, we all have to one way or the other — except the particular fanbase which fetishises these two acts tends to shout very loudly about how they love POP! Maybe even…perfect pop, with all that phrase’s dodgy connotations. But if you really think that this is the best that Saint Etienne, Richard X and 2009 have to give, you should stop kidding yourself. (It was still a great song, mind. Was. Nearly two decades ago.)
[4]

Pete Baran: Not quite sure why anyone would want an extended remix which sounds like an original 12″ mix. The song is great, remains great and this mix is almost the dictionary definition of superfluous. How do you score something near perfection that hasn’t really been fucked with? Maybe average the score I would have given it (10) with the irrelevance of the remix (0)…
[5]

Martin Skidmore: Richard X’s pulsing electro additions here fortunately do not overwhelm the irresistible keyboards or the singing on Saint Etienne’s first single, from 1990. I’m not sure that the song’s delicacy is benefitted by extra layers or length, but it’s still pretty wonderful.
[8]

Keane Tzong: “Foxbase Beta” is a great idea, but one that works a bit better on, well, all the other songs on the album than on this, perhaps by dint of its being a reinterpretation of another’s song to begin with (like Telephone, but with record productions?). It’s a nice little reswizzle of the original, and nothing is ruined/everything remains quite definitely listenable… but there’s an unambitiousness to the mix that disappoints, faintly and vaguely.
[7]

Matt Cibula: LOVE the original, maybe Neil Young’s best slow jam. Liked it when St. E remade it. This version, for some reason, bores the bejeezus-monkeys out of me.
[3]

Melissa Bradshaw: Even the piano and the reverb, the only remaining pleasures, have been glazed over with a suffocating electro sheen. Give me Kylie’s take on Saint Etienne anyday.
[3]

Alfred Soto: Since the original version lived and died on how the of-its-time shufflebeat prodded the anonymous disco dolly to a distracted froth — the most devastating response to Neil Young’s male angst — I didn’t have much patience for this one’s “updates.” When I want acoustic strums I’ll listen to the damn Young version.
[6]

Edward Okulicz: I never really warmed to the Alpha mix of this and this reworking only brings the song forward a decade, leaving it stuck between good memories and still being dated. Less timeless than seemingly endless.
[6]

Analogy time!…

[Website]
[6.60]

Dave Moore: The porno fake-guitar squeal intro suggests some 90’s meta-pulp flick centering on a softcore threesome (where is that Wild Things VHS?) but no, Rihanna is grim, grim, grim. Don’t get me wrong, I’d love for her to write the song about how being in an abusive relationship is like toying with death every day, but this song is way too literally about an actual game of Russian Roulette, with such groan-inducers as “you can see my heart beating through my chest” (no we can’t!) and “I know that I must pass this test” (no you mustn’t!) and and “it’s too late to think of the value of my life” (no it’s not!) and, and, and. I don’t necessarily expect playfulness from someone as resolutely humorless as Rihanna, but does she really not understand that there is no possible way for this not to read as a little campy? What hath Heath Ledger wrought?
[6]

Edward Okulicz: Out of the mouths of babes; after this song’s first play on my local radio station, the DJ asked a caller what they thought and they said: “It sounds like Roxette.” If only, though it is as deathly humourless. Anything Chris Brown does is going to be seen as odious in light of him being an abusive bastard, but we shouldn’t cut Rihanna and her writers slack for a dense fog of a production hiding nothing compelling whatsoever.
[5]

Chuck Eddy: The production is a stained-glass goth window, almost in the Mylene Farmer or Jeanne Mas sense. The vocal is so-what cabaret R&B that never quite engages. The words, if inspired by something newsworthy that happened in real life, feel artistically detached regardless — which is not necessarily a bad thing. The ending gunshot is a nice but unsurprising touch. The tempo’s too slow.
[7]

Kat Stevens: After a few years of phoned-in guest spots and automaton euro-dance hits, I’d almost forgotten that Rihanna was capable of the levels of emotion she once delivered on “Umbrella”. Her performance here is spine-chilling: shorn of auto-tune and nasal congestion, she sends the chorus soaring clear of the dark shadows only to return to a shivering but equally determined whisper. Both the subject matter and the predator-stalking production are a big risk for a 2009 comeback single — Rihanna could have easily played it safe with a electro’n’b copycat or something ft. Lil Wayne, and no-one would have blamed her — but luckily for us she likes games of chance. Shame about the wanky guitar solo at the beginning.
[9]

Alfred Soto: She’s singing better all the time, and someone should shoot whoever’s encouraged her. I don’t hear any vocal filigrees in this Beyoncé-esque track that match the controlled raunch of the opening guitar solo. Imagine Ri injecting herself into a contemporary “Maggot Brain.”
[5]

Martin Skidmore: The song is kind of scary, with a great killer line at the end of the second verse. I like Rihanna’s voice, and her strained tones work for the tension of the song, though the flattening on the last line of the chorus doesn’t work for me. Still, a genuinely compelling single.
[8]

Frank Kogan: Rihanna, who doesn’t have the lungs to go over the top, has found a way to do so anyway, using the part of her voice that’s a thick pool of ashes and then she’s absolutely unrelenting, “Unfaithful” even more than this. And although the Chris thing makes her seem genuinely at risk, there’s a part of me that treats this as camp and starts making wisecracks. When I hear her sing “Take the gun and count to 3,” my mind involuntarily proceeds to, “Or 4… on the floor”. But maybe that’s ’cause I’m nervous.
[8]

Anthony Easton: Slightly more problematic then the Crystals’ “He Hit me and It Felt Like A Kiss” — talks perfectly about the profound ambiguity of being in love with a boy who will do you nothing but harm; the self-awareness is what destroys one.
[8]

Alex Macpherson: Ever since her abandonment of dancehall, Rihanna has excelled most when performing increasingly dark ballads: the melodramatic “Unfaithful”, the shellshocked “Cry” and — most of all — the terrified “Haunted”, which is the most obvious precursor to “Russian Roulette”. It’s a beautifully paced and crafted single: a noirish processional in the verses, mills of God grinding slowly but surely with a straight-outta-808s tread, and a full-on theatrical set piece in the chorus. Rihanna’s stately pleading lends itself well to conveying the Victorian gothic heart that beats within — the hint of hysteria concealed under the ice, behind the shadows, in genuinely spine-chilling lines such as “that he’s here — means he’s never lost”.
[9]

Ian Mathers: Overly dramatic? Maybe (and we really didn’t need the resolution we get at the end – if it had stopped with the sound of the chamber spinning that would have been perfect), but “Russian Roulette” is also darkly suggestive of all kinds of interesting things, and from the subtext to the vocal performance to the production, it’s the best ballad Rihanna’s done yet. Having this be your first single back after being the kind of tragic tabloid fodder she’s been is a sign not just of a willingness to take your work to interesting, uncomfortable places: it also shows a lot of guts.
[8]

Matt Cibula: All the love and sympathy for the R, but this ballad could be outrun by an ankylosaurus.
[3]

Anthony Miccio: Ne-Yo didn’t give Rihanna a tearjerker so much as a soggy handkerchief, but that’s no excuse for getting upstaged by the bass.
[5]

Alex Ostroff: This is pleasant enough, I suppose, but for a project supposedly Rated R, it’s surprisingly tepid. “Russian Roulette” relies on the subject matter and the kitschy track-ending gunshot for shock value, rather than seeking out something genuinely compelling or dark. The consistently strong Good Girl Gone Bad earned Rihanna goodwill to spare, but also proves that she can, and has, done better.
[5]

Doug Robertson: A soulful, epic song, just begging to be performed on a darkened stage. Obviously with that incident still fresh in people’s minds, this could be weighed down by the search for double meanings in the lyrics, but ultimately lyrically this is a pretty standard “Falling in love’s a bit of a risk, eh!” song, and, while ultimately the song itself follows pretty a similarly familiar pattern, they’ve spent enough on the polish, and Rihanna herself manages to strike the right balance between bold and vulnerable, so as to lift it above what could, in other hands, be a quite average performance.
[6]

John Seroff: Obsessively and oddly literal, “Russian Roulette” offers up rattling bullets as castanets, a whirring pistol barrel and an ending marked by a single abrupt shot. As a theme for The Deer Hunter: The Musical it’s sensible; as the opening salvo from one of the year’s most anticipated pop albums, it is, shall we say, interesting? Is Rihanna comparing the suicide pact to an abusive relationship? If so, she’s going out of her way to veil the biography: I’m more inclined to chalk the song’s hyper-dramatic morbidity up to Ri-Ri’s “Disturbia” goth streak and the Halloween season. There’s a certain constant emotionlessness that removes her from this track. As with the best of Rihanna, “Roulette” is Broadway musical catchy, sliding off the ear cleanly and without bitter aftertaste. For a song about shooting yourself, that’s a tough order.
[7]

No it isn’t…

[Myspace]
[4.08]

Kat Stevens: A man in bright orange trousers is about to take me by the hand and lead me off over a grassy knoll covered in oversized daisies for some mandatory fun involving clapping. I feel like Wednesday Addams at Camp Chippewa.
[1]

Michaelangelo Matos: Oh, Karen. I was so taken with you this year. It’s Blitz! is one of the few rock albums I actually want to listen to lately, your band was one of the few decent things I saw at a typically unsatisfying outdoor festival during Memorial Day weekend, and if I always found the post-Bowie shtick kind of thin, the SNL appearance reversed that. You seemed so giddy, and it transferred beautifully. This is giddy, too. It is also a grating mess, about ten times more precious than anyone needs, formless and shapeless and bratty and tepid. Its cutie-pie-ness is offensive. Please, no more fingerpainting.
[2]

Alex Ostroff: Loose, spirited and ramshackle, Karen O’s work for Where the Wild Things Are is closer in spirit perhaps to Fever to Tell than her mannered and controlled performances on this year’s It’s Blitz!. That Wild Things fails to reach that album’s heights is perhaps an indicator of how far she’s come. The film’s greatest strength was its ability to evoke both the joy and terror of childhood, and “All is Love” captures the exuberance of youth, but does so through a fog of nostalgia. While tracks like “Worried Shoes” could use some of the joy present here, “All is Love” lacks their fear, and thereby any weight.
[7]

Ian Mathers: It’s just as well Karen O’s day job has made the best record of their career this year, because seemingly everything else she touches is going bad faster than unrefrigerated dairy (her contribution to the new Flaming Lips, for example, is a particularly bad spot on an already dire album). This is at least lightweight and inoffensive (unless you really hate sub-Beatles hippy love bullshit, or kids) as opposed to wince-inducing, but if “All Is Love” is indicative of the levels of “whimsy” found in Where the Wild Things Are, then I’m glad I haven’t seen it yet.
[4]

John Seroff: Poorly arranged, tin-eared toybox trawling spiked with the salty aluminum aftertaste of off-brand canned green beans and the atmosphere of a basement in The Gap. Whatever innate exuberance lies in the shrieking child’s voice that’s intended to uplift this post-Raffi-lite marshmallow is quashed by layer after layer of babyfood gumption and puerile desperation. As subtle as a Care Bear and just as deep.
[2]

Chuck Eddy: So she’s officially the new Kimya now, right? Sign me up for the backlash; I’m so ready. (P.S.: Still haven’t seen the movie. Plan to soon.) (P.P.S.: At least Kimya has a sense of humor.)
[2]

Anthony Easton: I am such a fucking sap, but the movie made me cry, and the song makes me think about my folks breaking up, and my dad leaving, and not knowing where to go — the film is so much about that, and the wild rambunctiousness has a hope for completion, and a desire for a manic release. It’s manipulative, in the sense that it knows which signifiers it is reaching for, and is shameless in doing the digging to find them
[7]

Spencer Ackerman: So beautiful and joyous I want to cry. A whistled bridge! I get the feeling that Karen sometimes wants to be in the Arcade Fire.
[8]

Anthony Miccio: The Danielson Famile should sue. We all should.
[3]

Dave Moore: If y’all really want to dupe yourselves into an infantile nostalgia coma for some other generation’s kid-media touchstones so bad (NB: the 1973 version of Where the Wild Things Are is a breezy six minutes with a better musical score), why not just listen to Radio Disney? OH WAIT, because RD’s current rising stars are Owl City and they wouldn’t touch this stuff with a ten-foot pole.
[3]

Alfred Soto: The soundtrack’s coup is a painstaking Daniel Johnston cover, but the rest of its topographic analysis of childhood has a certain fidelity if you think that its indie-rock designers have an inordinate obsession with the subject in their respective bands anyway. Karen O spelling out words in a parched high register isn’t so different from the ridiculous nu-Goth of her Yeah Yeah Yeahs persona. I don’t like acoustic singalongs though.
[5]

Mallory O’Donnell: There is a fine line between making music for children and making music at them. Karen O stumbles over it, and I wonder if that isn’t Carole King quickly pulling her foot back and affecting an innocent grin. Where the latter spent equal time with her efforts for folks both tall and small, this sounds like it was dashed off in an afternoon. Easy come, easy go.
[4]

Keane Tzong: Well, I guess it successfully captures the essence of the movie.
[5]

Once more with the not-quite-crossing-over…

[Video][Myspace]
[6.64]

Michaelangelo Matos: U.K. funky by way of late ’90s 2step by way of early ’90s pop-house: it can be hard to differentiate them, not that I’m complaining in the least when it sounds this effervescent. It makes me want to play my, my, my, my bongo.
[8]

Alex Macpherson: Through the twists and turns of UK funky in 2009, Fuzzy Logik and Egypt’s “In The Morning” has been a delightful constant. It’s bubbly, giddy, Egypt not so much riding the beat as tripping down it as the champagne goes to her head, but it’s also deceptively firm. There’s no uncertainty about “In The Morning”, and consequently it’s strong enough to hold its own in any context.
[10]

Spencer Ackerman: Near-unlistenable disco with drag-queen vocals. Got kind of a skip beat. Life is too short.
[2]

Mallory O’Donnell: Dance miniscene of the moment UK Funky seems more a suitable compass pointing towards the current house revival trend than a potential source of crossover hits. Then again, if it dishes out a few more tracks like “In the Morning,” with its effortless combination of retro feel and modern production, it may serve as both. The hard stutter drum pushes up so very perfectly against Egypt’s mocha voice and this kind of contrast is exactly what garage, UK soul, and just plain music all across the board needs right now.
[8]

Pete Baran: There is something wonderfully stripped down about this; it has the anything-can-happen charm of a lot of early-90s dance. Even the Binatone backing seems clearer and more bubbly than anything I have heard in an age. Like Basement Jaxx without the bells or whistles or banjos or pointless breakdowns or whatever the Jaxx have thrown at their songs recently.
[8]

Alfred Soto: Robin S’s “Show Me Love” updated for the post-post-modern age: softer, smaller, faster, weaker. I want to hear the remixes.
[5]

Rodney J. Greene: For a couple of months, I was offput by the dinky popcorn synth lead and the simplicity of the drum pattern, looking to funky house for idiophone madness and cross-rhythmic chords as I do. I had a quick turnabout once I realized how much that stuttered synth line really drives the syncopation, almost echoing a broken beat percussion track while allowing the drum programming here to be more straightforward. I also came around to Egypt’s vocal, which, contrary to convention, is neither anthemic nor sultry, but pitched somewhere betwixt, playing at the edges of different emotions without over-committing.
[8]

Alex Ostroff: “In the Morning” was apparently ubiquitous this summer in Ibiza and Ayia Napa, and had I encountered it in July, I would likely be more predisposed to liking it. The ping-ponging electronic melody has a funky Latin swing, and Fuzzy Logic plays with the arrangement enough to keep it interesting — dropping out everything but the bass, layering textured synths, and so forth. The best of UK Funky has a build and release to it (see: Kyla) that verges on transcendent — something this is sorely lacking.
[4]

Cecily Nowell-Smith: I just can’t get my mind round the idea that this wasn’t a hit. It was everywhere this summer just gone, on car stereos and mobile phones and in my head as sure and bright as sunshine. There’s nothing to it, nothing at all, a simple loop and simplistic verse, and when you get to that one-line chorus it’s some huge fierce burst of joy, let your love come in, let your love come in. It’s exactly the song that comes home with people like a summer tan, stays warm and bubbly in the chilly autumn charts — and it didn’t. Or at least, it came home, but who bothered to go out and buy it? It’s weird: I never really thought about this one, that people wouldn’t buy their holiday song the same way they wouldn’t get photos developed any more, because it’s just not necessary. I keep thinking: if it’s not a hit, how are we going to remember it existed? How will anyone know what summer 2009 sounded like? Dear nostalgists of the future: it sounded like this.
[8]

Additional Scores

Anthony Easton: [7]
Martin Skidmore: [5]

We don’t necessarily wants the redhead…

[Website]
[5.57]

John Seroff: “Ignorance“, a scrawny sneer of a breakup, was my new best friend for a month so my expectations for Paramore’s new single were pretty high. “Careful” suffers from only slightly better than pedestrian emo orchestration, but benefits from Hayley Williams’ lead vocals. I don’t know why a Fueled by Ramen prodigy barely out of her teens speaks so true and clear to me; perhaps Williams, who grew up a half hour from my old Tennessee home, reminds me of my own Southern youth. Whatever the case, Hayley’s you’re-not-the-boss-of-me yowl resonates; her buttery growling Rs, pursed lip OOOs and vulnerable, breathless caesuras perfectly evoke the flailing turmoil of puberty. “Careful”‘s conflict is all internal; the futility of trying and the fear of failure wrestle with hot blood and hormones. Nonsensical teenage indignation (“You can’t tell me to feel”) butts heads with too-old-too-soon warnings. Strong stuff; it’d be that much stronger with an interesting hook.
[7]

Alfred Soto: “The truth never set me free/So I did it myself” is a good rock lyric, unsupported, alas by Katy Perry/Linda Perry’s idea of truth: stentorian power chords, with vocals to match, especially in the elongated vowels department. Of course the Perrys didn’t write it, but this expert duplication proves how teenage angst can pay off well before the band gets too old. If not they can join Karen O’s cohorts on the soundtrack to a Harriet the Spy remake in 2013.
[4]

Anthony Miccio: Guitarist John Farro and drummer brother Zack bring such unusual variety and emotion to their Hot Topic rock that it’s a shame Hayley Williams smothers the track in the usual boring, obtuse wails of discontent. Ironic as it may be, her vocals are the least novel thing here.
[5]

Al Shipley: Paramore are at their best when either their hooks are giddier or their drama is more maudlin, but they’re not at all bad when they just rock out and deploy cool drum fills instead.
[6]

Pete Baran: It strikes me the step change in recording this kind of stuff from 20 years ago is the quality of the drum sounds. There is a clarity to the staccato machine-gun drumming that sounds immense in my headphones and I can imagine destroying the dancefloor in a club. I can’t remember the last time I’ve wanted to listen to a track again just for its drumming, which I guess is a win.
[6]

Martin Skidmore: I like parts of this: her singing is sharp, it has some energy, there are moments where it sounds like there is a good song. But there are also moments when it doesn’t, and some of the playing is clumsy and even misguided (U2 guitar licks do not fit with the punky pace).
[5]

Mordechai Shinefield: Has Jessica Hopper written about Paramore yet? Having a female frontman on an emo song, surprisingly, changes nothing about the emo dynamic. Her voice doesn’t even differ substantially from other practitioners (and maybe C&C’s Claudio has an even more feminine sound) and any added oestrogen is indistinguishable from Dashboard, or Thursday. The good news is that it’s just as good as any other good emo song of the last decade. The bad news? It’s just as good as any other good emo song of the last decade.
[6]

Not-so-super troopers…

[Video][Website]
[3.88]

Michaelangelo Matos: What do you mean rap didn’t get saved by dudes who boast about riding around listening to Nickelback?
[4]

Spencer Ackerman: Argh! Another subpar Slaughterhouse track. How in the world can four obviously gifted, super-lyrical MCs — Joe Budden, Joell Ortiz, Crooked I & Royce the 5’9 — consistently form less than the sum of their parts? They’re like a sun-melted Voltron that’s fused together and doesn’t work right.
[4]

Chris Boeckmann: I bet a generic flashy NBC Vegas-themed show could use this for the opening credits, but that certainly doesn’t justify its existence.
[3]

Martin Skidmore: Generally it’s a bunch of good rappers having fun over a punchy hardcore rap backing, albeit with unwelcome Lenny Kravitz guitar, mostly lusting after various pop stars. Fun.
[7]

Rodney J. Greene: I admit that I’ve avoided Slaughterhouse in spite of some goodwill toward a couple of its members, just because they seem to attract the wrong type of rap nerd: underground posturers who praise highly conceptual lyrics at the expense of, well, anything else. I expected this to be bad, and it is. But not at all in the ways I expected. The rhymes never get more involved than low level riffing on the names of rockers and pop starlets, as if the Shop Boyz really thought they were clever. Musically, this is aimed right at the airwaves, with a mass appeal beat and a female-sung hook that nags more than it entices, but there’s no indication that anyone involved has listened to urban radio in the past five years.
[4]

Martin Kavka: My appreciation for clever wordplay here — e.g. Crooked I’s “something in my denim need a kiss; call it Gene Simmons” and most of the interaction between Joe Budden and Joell Ortiz in the last verse — clashes with my disgust at the song’s portrayal of women as mere pretexts for said wordplay (and orgasms). The disgust wins. Still, if there were less artistry on display here, this would be a solid 0.
[3]

Pete Baran: So there I was, hobo humping with my slo-bo babe and suddenly this Slaughterhouse track came on the jukebox. And she said to me: “You know, I really like the singer in this band”, so I explained to her how they were a hip-hop supergroup (at which point she raised an eyebrow at me, at which point I had to admit that pissing off Eminem, Jay-Z and/or Dre doesn’t quite give you supergroup status). She then got annoyed that the voice she liked singing the chorus wasn’t really a member of the band, and that the name Slaughterhouse really made them sound like a second rate metal band from 1986. I had to admit that her point had merit, and she went on to explain that French rap is just like Pernod: only good when you are in France. She really should have this gig.
[4]

John Seroff: A tainted sloppy joe of thrown together odds and ends that likes to show off an unimpressive familiarity with cultural touchstones and late era Eminem-style punchlines. “How ironic is it/that I’m ridin’ round listenin’ to Nickelback”? Well Royce, based on the strength of “The One”, both your crews make formulaic, self-satisfied, unlistenable cock rock. So not very.
[2]

Politicalicious…

[Video][Website]
[4.43]

Kat Stevens: I’m not sure what to make of this. NOEL’S JAM SNOG SAVES TIN TOSSER?
[2]

Chuck Eddy: These two people generally sound pretty okay for sellers of spinach, and they don’t fall on their faces here. But beyond “war is bad” and “cops are racists,” I have no idea what the hell they’re trying to say. “Government is bad”, maybe? Which aligns with them tea partiers and idiots opposed to a public health insurance option — cool beans.
[6]

Pete Baran: Quite possibly the track the Style Council thought they were making all the way through the 80s, but even Weller et al couldn’t be this dull and rubbish.
[0]

Melissa Bradshaw: For the blond singer from Devon to try to recreate revolutionary soul a la Marvin in league with Nasty Nas just makes the task of believing in her a little bit too demanding. She produced this herself, obviously under the influence of Raphael Saadiq’s recent output, and the wall of sound and echo-y vocals are lovely indeed. You just wish she’d either play with her obvious inauthenticity or put some kind of actual heart into it. Instead she comes across as always as a very talented but not very bright soul singer. She also sounds unfortunately like Anastacia.
[5]

Erick Bieritz: Stone and Nas are an appropriate pairing for “Governmentalist,” although not one that’s particularly flattering for either party. Like Nas, Stone has struggled to escape the image she established as a young breakout artist. Like Stone, Nas struggles to sound relevant despite a conservative musical approach. Nas rapping about GM food would sound ridiculous on its own; the soulful guitar licks just make it that much worse.
[3]

Alex Ostroff: The throwback soul revival of the post-Winehouse era has focused almost exclusively on towers of horns, so it’s nice to hear an exquisite guitar groove serve as the base for Joss Stone’s warblings here. Ham-fisted agit-pop lyrics are already embarrassing without NaS claiming that “Governmentalist killed the Kennedies/I hear Joss Stone got the remedies.” The award for best/worst line is in close contention here. Joss attempts to be righteous and ends up hilarious: “If in God you trust/Can’t you hear him still?/I ain’t no preacher/But. THOU! SHALT! NOT! KILL!” NaS, meanwhile is simply befuddling: “I’m an ordinary project dude/I’m subject to genetically-modified food/That’s FDA approved.” No matter how hard they try though, they can’t sink the guitar’s funk.
[6]

Michaelangelo Matos: “I hope you’re happy and you sleep so great at night”: I realize Stone is young, but come on. “I’m just an ordinary project dude/I’m subject to genetically-modified food”: and just you, right, Nas? Pretty nice track, though.
[5]

Martin Kavka: The lyrical apex of the song — “I ain’t no preacher but thou shalt not kill” — is just a mess. In the first half she claims that she has no mastery of the Bible (or has no authority to tell us what it means); in the second half she claims that nonetheless she knows what it really says and we should listen to her. Whatevs, Joss. (If anyone cares, I think it’s difficult to pin down the precise semantic distinction between the Hebrew verbs harag and ratsach in order to decide whether the Bible here prohibits all killing or just murder.) And in forty seconds, Nas mixes in Kennedy-assassination conspiracy theories, racist cops’ tendency to stop drivers for being black, the tragic lot of child soldiers in Uganda, vehicular love, and support for Stone as EMI oppresses her. Any effect that this song has is simply because of its beautifully swaggering production, which recalls far more elegant and urgent protest anthems of the past.
[5]

Rodney J. Greene: I can’t say the thick-bottomed soul doesn’t groove; it’s as muddy as the earnest rhetoric is muddled.
[6]

Martin Skidmore: The usual very convincing and classy reconstruction of old soul sounds. It’s more or less like my favourite music ever, but this is dead archival imitation, however skillfully done. Nas’s guest verse is very welcome relief from Jools Holland’s idea of what music should be about.
[4]

Spencer Ackerman: She’s got a really big voice, doesn’t she? It’s got kind of a Stax thing happening, and you can smell residue in the beat. It’s too fast for Nas to rap comfortably, but he does his best, and conspicuously endorses Joss. This is harsher than I intend it, but her melodramatic singing reminds of me the Jenna Maroney character on “30 Rock” playing Janis Joplin. Nas did a cynical thing here.
[5]

John Seroff: Especially live, Stone’s iron hand/velvet glove growl is difficult to discount. Unfortunately, Joss is embracing Prince-level weirdness these days; in both her ongoing label woes and in her well-intentioned, cinematically overwrought music, Stone asks her audience to put up with an increasingly mannered narrative. “Governmentalist”‘s pathos careens a bit too close to bathetic navel-gazing as both meaning and poetry take a back seat to impressive-but-empty Mayfield mimicry. Dope beat aside, a social indictment this vague and uninspiring feels too late by both decades and months.
[6]

Ian Mathers: What I caught of Stone’s lyrics the first time around has ensured I haven’t bothered listening any closer (and let’s not talk of Nas’ thuddingly stupid guest verse — you half expect him to pull a Bill Maher and start ranting about vaccines), but on a purely sonic level this is lovely, a smokey slow-burn that would be a good song if it was just about, I don’t know, romantic betrayal or something. Instead the whole thing is a hash of lowest-common-denominator pandering (no matter how sincerely it’s felt), almost random accusations and a persistent atmosphere of low grade paranoia that’s neither productive nor interesting.
[3]

Alfred Soto: I hear less than meets the eye — even Nas’ bit has more signifying than literal power. In other words, the soul moves might have more force coming from anyone but a British woman. For all I know her membership in a new tax bracket prompted the sudden interest in government meddling.
[6]

Why is it always the smooth ones that prove most divisive?…

[Video][Website]
[5.89]

Pete Baran: I can’t remember who proved it with science, but I know it’s a stone cold FACT that chanson doesn’t work in English. So yes baby, you are a fool. And a dull one to boot.
[2]

Anthony Easton: She shortens vowels when she should lengthen them, and she speeds up phrases in the wrong places, plus she does the whole Peggy Lee sing/speech thing poorly, and working thru the same thoughts in French does not really improve anything.
[4]

Anthony Miccio: If that self-satisfied quiver in her voice is a defining characteristic, I can’t say I want to investigate beyond this precocious jazzcat’s mannered flirt. Minus one for the scat break.
[5]

Alfred Soto: A macrobiotic cook! A humanitarian who, according to Wikipedia, “often speaks about the benefits of music therapy”! Even if I didn’t know that she was disabled at nineteen, this is far too much baggage for one woman to carry, never mind a string section. So, yeah, I’d still think she was a menace and a fourth-rate Norah Jones if she voted for Mitt Romney in a 2008 straw poll, read Ayn Rand, and bit down hard on a pheasant’s neck while it still lived.
[3]

John Seroff: Melody Gardot’s backstory is a publicist’s dream: young artistic type is traumatized in a horrible bike wreck and emerges half-crippled, weirdly photosensitive and reliant on music therapy to communicate. Like an Oliver Sacks story, the sound grounds her; she makes a demo while in rehab that gets her signed by a major label. Six years after the accident, her second album is released to a devoted fan base; it’s critically well-received and there’s a growing sense that she could well be 2010’s Norah Jones. It’s an inspiring biography, but does the music swing? It does. Gardot’s hummingbird vibrato, leisurely pace, slight sibilance and an almost jaded restraint hearken back to post-war supper club cabaret. Sweetly sighing violins, a metronome of classical guitar and brushes on the traps to simulate vinyl surface noise close up the time capsule. Cool, fragile and elegant as a chilled martini glass, “Baby I’m A Fool” would be more at home in a ballroom or a bedroom than an iPod playlist but (and I speak from experience) it sounds just beautiful in all the above.
[8]

Martin Skidmore: The singing has the laid-back pleasure of the best Brazilian female singers, and the song is excellent — put me in mind of Tom Waits’ “I Never Talk To Strangers”, oddly. This is obviously a dated style and I have no idea what kind of audience she’ll find, but I think she’s wonderful.
[9]

Alex Ostroff: Melody’s got gorgeous tone and a way with words, but it’s the arrangement that truly makes this great. The string opening prepares us for Ella + Cole levels of lushness and bombast, and then pulls away, turning the rest of “Baby I’m a Fool” into an exercise in expectations and anticipation. When the vocals enter, Melody’s fool in love is supported by nothing but the sparsely plucked guitar. The strings soon reenter, and at the start of the next verse the drums arrive. She savours the taste of vanity and insanity in her mouth, rolling them over the languid shuffle. Just as we’re reminded that “the moment’s fleeting,” the accompaniment drops out. Gardot stretches out her syllables and grants us two seconds of silence — two seconds rendered an eternity — before drawing us back in, and having taunted us with the loss of her, invites us to fall for her instead. Done.
[9]

Hillary Brown: There’s something imperfect and vulnerable about this simply produced nostalgia-evoking track that makes it better than just an exercise in re-creation. Gardot’s purring has character, and it’s a nice contrast with the diaphragm-driven pop tunes that mostly fill the charts.
[6]

Martin Kavka: On certain days, Melody Gardot can put me to sleep. On other days, when I can let myself float away thanks to her gifts of phrasing and purring and her ability to prove that less is more, I fantasize about her ripping out Mariah Carey’s larynx.
[7]