Gunnin’ for that Snow Patrol money…

[Video][Website]
[6.23]

Iain Mew: For various reasons there is no other music as guaranteed to bypass reason and head straight for my emotions (and nostalgia) as Parachutes-era Coldplay, and this is one hell of a pastiche of exactly that. It starts off like a straight “Yellow” rip, but cherrypicks the best bits from the sad, clomping bass of “Sparks” to the blooms of echoing guitar like those that lit up “Trouble”. They very briefly give away that they’re not the real thing with a few seconds of power drumming, but pull back with beautiful restraint. Most of all though, while Hayley Williams is clearly never going to sound like Chris Martin, she successfully taps in to the universal but believable emotion of the source material, and that’s no mean feat.
[8]

Al Shipley: The story the lyrics tell, of guarded skepticism towards love gradually being broken down, could almost be a parallel for Paramore themselves, who’d all but avoided this kind of brazen sentimentality until now. But they finally gave in to the temptation to make a big gloopy power ballad, and man is it worth the wait.
[8]

Jonathan Bradley: The vibrant Franklin, Tennessee scene — the Nashville suburb, home to Paramore, Be Your Own Pet and Miley Cyrus, is apparently ground zero for talented teenage girls — deserves better than this sub-Coldplay balladeering. I might be tempted to read some tension into “I promised myself I’d never sing of love if it does not exist/But you are the only exception,” except this plodding, meandering nonentity has too much slack in it. Is Williams’ exception that she’s singing of love in this case, though it doesn’t exist? Do I care? The tune’s agreeable enough on the album, but if the band sought a single to prove they weren’t all punk-pop anthems, “Misguided Ghosts” would have worked much better.
[4]

Martin Skidmore: I’ve said good things about singer Hayley Williams before, but the sharp strength isn’t applicable to this slow, mostly acoustic number, and some bad tuning problems put me off. Nonetheless, she’s the best thing in this — it’s a dreary song and the playing could be anyone. At least she has some character.
[4]

John Seroff: I’ve pretty much established my Jukebox crush on Hayley Williams; the whole of Brand New Eyes surprised me enough to count it among my top thirty ’09 albums. “Only Exception”, a shoegazey this-is-not-a-love-song emo morsel that refuses to go all soft, absolutely follows suit. It may have the too-obvious patina of junior-high slow dance dramatics but Hayley goes the extra mile for a rebel’s touch of Lesley Gore. When the hand on the tracing paper is this steady and firm, I still call it art.
[8]

Chuck Eddy: Started out crossing my fingers that Hayley was making a Taylor Swift move about family traumas; the Mom and Dad memories choked me up. Then she switched to self-analysis and boyfriend boredom and Cranberries hiccups, and the thread was lost. So an “8” for the first minute, then a “4” for the subsequent three-and-a-half; averages out to:
[5]

Renato Pagnani: This is one of those wave-your-cell-phone-in-the-air songs that Paramore will play just past the midpoint of their set to signal the sensitive, acoustic part of their show. “The Only Exception” is a delicate but not pouffy thing, and it’s nice to see that a band known for its pinched nerve, MySpace pop punk has another mode, and one they’re just as comfortable operating in. The band seems to relish these more relaxed moments, stretching out their feet, able to do a dance just slightly different from their usual. The songwriting itself has the least amount of traction here, but Williams has never been a particularly great lyricist — her strengths lie in how she can pull off both snot-nosed and vulnerable. You hear it said from time to time, but sometimes it really is just about the voice.
[6]

Michaelangelo Matos: I can’t help but hear that spoken “are” in “You are the only exception” as some kind of sop to the fans who’d cry sellout–as if injecting Haley’s “real” self into the money chorus, a stumble in the melody that nods to self-consciousness, awkwardness, tentativeness. That’s not a bad thing at all, and the world can always use prom songs even if you can’t. But you don’t have to be a mall-punk to think this sounds like a Teddy Ruxpin ad.
[5]

Katherine St Asaph: Will undoubtedly launch a thousand more Twilight fanvids. Shame it doesn’t have anything interesting to say.
[3]

Matt Cibula: Lovely verses, sung beautifully. The chorus is somewhat off-putting (that “are” jars every time) and it repeats a few dozen too many times. But the build is there, the late bridge is devastating, and I for one vote yes here.
[7]

Alex Ostroff: I’ve never heard Paramore before, but was under the impression that they were girl-fronted emo/punk in the vein of Ashlee Simpson, not Rilo Kiley 2.0. Though I suspect their waltz-time isn’t as engaging a look as their punk moves, “The Only Exception” is pretty and gets under your skin. Hayley Williams’ performance draws me in (especially the languid pause at “comfortable…distance”), but I wish the song were a little less sleepy and a little more steel-pedal. The production leans too heavily on the lushness and murk deployed by Coldplay and Doves back in the day, instead of trusting Williams’ strength as a vocalist. This is a damn shame, because between daddy cursing the wind, Hayley’s commitment to loneliness, and the lilt in her voice, there’s a great alt-country song buried here.
[7]

Jonathan Bogart: I may be overrating this, but if it manages to get played on the radio all summer, I’m pretty sure I’ll feel I underrated it by August. Put simply, this is the best ballad I’ve heard a mainstream rock band produce since the 1990s. I can’t wait for the anecdotes about people who use it for their wedding song, not realizing that there’s a middle eight.
[8]

Kat Stevens: I used to be a big Radiohead fan, to the point of seeking out live bootlegs and rarities. I once started an ambitious blogging project to review their entire catalogue in chronological order. I thought they were important. But I never really liked “No Surprises” – sappy and delicate, instead of irritable and awkward. I’ve pretty much outgrown Radiohead now, or perhaps it’s fairer to say the service they rendered for me is no longer required since I stopped being a miserable student comprising a minimum of 73% pure emo. In any case, I didn’t bother buying their last album. The inevitable irony is that now I really like an even sappier, more delicate version of “No Surprises”, and to make matters worse it’s about mushy feelings instead of the loneliness and disillusionment of modern society. JUST CALL ME GRANDMA.
[8]

Inescapability ahoy…

[Website]
[3.64]

Martin Skidmore: There’s a fine line between ‘very catchy’ and ‘fucking annoying’. For me this leaps boldly across to the latter side from the start, and happily stays there. “Eenie meenie miny moe/Catch a bad chick by her toe” is a horrible opening, and it sticks with the theme. Sean is heavily autotuned, Justin is wet. The Benny Blanco production is actually rather good, bright and cheery, but I kind of hate this anyway.
[1]

Michaelangelo Matos: The chorus is reprehensible, the appeal to kids is appalling, the Auto-tune needs the National Guard called on it: but that’s not what bothers me the most about this song. What does is this: “You seem like the type to love ’em and leave ’em/And disappear right after this song.” Sorry, dudes, but no: you do not get to be reflexively postmodern. This record sucked hard enough without it.
[1]

Al Shipley: The very existence of a song with this title by these artists has brought me about as much entertainment as any bad song in 2010 not by the Insane Clown Posse, so it gets a couple extra points for that. It gets the other points for the way they really try to sell this thing with such a forlorn melody and emotive vocals, even when they’re saying “shawty is a eenie meenie miney mo lover.”
[4]

Alex Ostroff: This is basically serviceable and inoffensive autotune&B, but I can’t get over the chorus. There is no level on which “Shorty is an eenie meenie minie moe lover” is not laughable, and the feeble attempts to evoke regret, pain or empathy in the verses are completely undercut by how incredibly dumb the entire conceit is. A suggestion: Kingston’s next single should be called “Lil’ Bo Peep” and feature Nicki Minaj. It’ll seem marginally less desperate.
[3]

Hillary Brown: If I start to think hard about this song, I could scale back my rating due to the fact that, for example, it’s not as bats as Trey Songz’s “LOL,” to which it bears some resemblance in its melodic qualities and immaturity, but sometimes the heart wants what it wants, and the pairing of two of the prettiest voices around today on material that doesn’t waste their talents is really nice to have.
[8]

Jonathan Bogart: I never expected Justin Bieber to be the highlight of a guest-spot, but he winds up sounding more thoughtful and assured than the presumable star of the track. (And now I’m wondering if all those songs I thought were by Akon were really Sean Kingston.) Meet the new Jesse McCartney, same as the old Jesse McCartney, I guess.
[5]

Renato Pagnani: Is it just me or does the Biebs sound exactly like Ellie Goulding here?
[2]

Alfred Soto: When Bieber pipes in his bit seconds after Kingston wishes in his Auto-tuned chirp that he and his girl “come together as one,” I assume Bieber is the girl. That Auto-Tune, I tell ya — turning boys into girls who want boys.
[3]

John Seroff: Number grades and critical reception hardly matter when what’s being critiqued is less a song and more a trending twitter topic. “Eenie Meenie” might have a greater half-life than a tweet, but I’m not sure it could outlast a green banana; evidence of this piggy being rushed too quickly to market is caked on like improperly trimmed flash. It took a few listens for me to realize that Kingster (Biebston?) were not trying to “catch a fat chick”, the lyrics sound mad-libbed and the by-the-numbers melody is drably preset and forgotten. To be fair, neither of these kids really rankles; they’ve both already pinched out at least one loaf of bleached but acceptable product (“Beautiful Girls” and “One Time” respectively). A low score here is less emblematic of my disliking the song (which I do, but whatever) and more a sign of my disapproval at the forcing of the golden goose to so frantically shit itself. A few more empty farts of this sort and the amiably mediocre Bieber may be fried and forgotten before he finishes his teens. Young fella, pace yourself.
[4]

Matt Cibula: I’m assuming that dude is saying “bad chick,” in which case this all makes a hilarious sort of nonsense. (If it’s “fat chick” then I subtract eight points from my score.) Anyway, I’ll get gored for this by the good critics around here but my ears hear a pretty good example of how artificial ingredients can taste wonderful, even though they are pretty damned bad for you in the long run.
[7]

Katherine St Asaph: My mother told me to pick the very best one, and you are not it. Especially when you just CTRL-V Bieber into “Fire Burning.”
[2]

And we end with the question: WHO ARE YOU, AND WHAT HAVE YOU DONE WITH THE REAL SKIDMORE?…

[Video][Website]
[6.60]

Martin Skidmore: Damn, this seems not to be a tribute to one of my favourite Bajan soca singers. Nonetheless, I like them better than most indie rock acts. Ted Leo can genuinely write a tune, with a poppier sensibility than the music suggests, and they play with some vigour and purpose. I have no idea what any of it means, but it’s very pleasant to listen to.
[7]

Jonathan Bogart: At least when Madness made a song called “Michael Caine” it had something to do with Michael Caine.
[6]

Matt Cibula: Can’t unlove this frozen rope of a song. Great leadoff track for a great album; not sure it’s anywhere near a single, not the way the world is now, and might not be a home run, but triples are the most exciting play anyway.
[9]

Spencer Ackerman: Another great, angular, manic Ted Leo song named after an animal and expressing the anxieties of the age of endless war and insecurity. Beautiful melodies, frantic everything else. Let’s give the drummer from the Pharmacists the respect he’s due.
[8]

Al Shipley: Although I’ve always enjoyed Ted Leo as an album artist, I respect that he usually knows how to pick a single that’ll grab non-fans like “Where Have All The Rude Boys Gone?” or “Me And Mia.” And while this sounds enough like the latter, it’s also pretty subpar as a pick hit. If drummer Chris Wilson injected more of his usual swing and springy fills into this flatfooted number I’d probably forgive the song’s weaknesses.
[5]

Ian Mathers: I wish I hadn’t read how great this was before hearing it, because aside from the astonishing (on several levels) “Me and Mia” Leo continues to underwhelm me. His voice seems whinier than normal here, which doesn’t help.
[5]

John Seroff: After listening dutifully to today’s selections of Ted Leo/The Nationals/The New Pornographers a good five or six times apiece, I still would be hard pressed to tell them apart well enough to write separate reviews for each. Please apply this [5] to all three tracks and please North American white people, do better.
[5]

Alfred Soto: For years Ted Leo’s voice kept me from appreciating his band’s pretty good chops and decent songcraft, and on this number it’s irritating enough that it dissuades me, bless him, from listening to the undoubted metaphorical overreach. But the Pharmacists (including Leo himself, if that’s indeed his guitar solo) are up to the tricky arrangement.
[6]

Chuck Eddy: I actually made it through his whole new album, and this opening track has some energy, and some interesting changes; the album’s got other songs I probably like more than this, too, though not much more — a bunch of 7’s, no 8’s, I don’t think. For such an intense and committed guy, Ted Leo’s quite the mushmouth — like, I know he’s supposed to be very political and all, but I can almost never understand why while actually listening to him. He also never sounds half as much like Thin Lizzy or Joe Jackson as I wish. Maybe I’d like him more if I liked the Jam more.
[7]

Michaelangelo Matos: He’s told a couple of reviewers that he re-recorded the album from scratch after earlier sessions felt lackluster. I can’t thank him enough. The band just sound like they couldn’t think of anything better to do than play these songs, and you can hear that especially well on “The Mighty Sparrow”: There’s a surprise opening, two false endings, a hyper skiffle groove, and one of Ted’s brief, lovely, underrated solos, all under 2:40, locked tight and loose as a goose.
[8]

We were gonna just have a photo of Neko Case here, but that professionalism for which we have become so famous got the better of us…

[Website]
[6.00]

Martin Skidmore: I can’t imagine many people listened to Neko Case’s exceptional best recordings and thought she’d be better in some lightweight Canadian indie rock supergroup, and indeed she isn’t. This seems to wash all of the feeling out of her voice, and we are left with something very ordinary, with fussy and tepid backing. What a waste.
[3]

Katherine St Asaph: Between Neko Case and the cello, this is plenty robust enough to work. The hints of ABBA in the chorus don’t hurt. Neither do the whistled parts, although I suppose if you’re going to take exception to something, those would be it.
[6]

Chuck Eddy: Still don’t get why people think Neko Case is a great singer; still don’t get why people think this is a great pop-rock band. Maybe because they manage to sound simultaneously fussy and sloppy?
[6]

Matt Cibula: Lots of nice signifiers (wow a whistling homage to “Games Without Frontiers”?), but nothing signified. Also: too cutesy by more than half.
[4]

Michaelangelo Matos: I may be underrating this slightly, but only because I suspect it still has room to grow on me. The cello (I think) playing the central riff rather than the guitar gives the arrangement a melancholy cast that belies its brisk tempo and Neko’s crisp vocal. Plus whistling that isn’t unbearably twee.
[7]

Jonathan Bogart: The rating is as much a predictor of where this will settle in my affections as it is a gauge of how I feel about it now. Hearing it back-to-back with the day’s other singles made it sound mannered and precious; hearing it in the middle of a mix I’d listen to by choice makes it sound like a giddy splash of quirky guitar-pop. Not the trying-too-hard “quirky” of which indie pop is too often guilty, just a song that happens to hit unusual accents on the rhythms and maybe sped Neko’s vocals up again.
[8]

Alfred Soto: All the pleasures here – whistling, crunchy rhythm strum against strings – are strictly formal, which is usually the case with this act when Neko Case isn’t singing, except more so now. What surprises me is how wan Neko sounds. Granted, she’s the only one in North America who can bait a line like “traffic was slow in the crash years” with enough subtext to entice critics into praising the New Pornos for describing life during a recession. But the sparkly thud of this number strains her powers.
[5]

Al Shipley: Nice try, but Butch Walker already made the best ELO pastiche of 2010.
[6]

Pete Baran: Is this the great lost mimsy Fleetwood Mac single missing from Tusk? You know what, I think it is. Well done band with rubbish name.
[9]

Ian Mathers: I loved Challengers a lot, more than most, but this is not making me excited about the new one. It’s a perfectly good song, but there’s no zest to it. They continue to rely on Neko Case too much.
[6]

It’s Slightly-Middle-Aged-North-American-Indie Thursday!!!…

[Video][Website]
[5.73]

Matt Cibula: Never heard the National before. Loved the title, loved the opening. Then the singer started singing the lyrics.
[3]

Chuck Eddy: Ridiculous stentorian-serious monotone vocals of no particular distinction above moody non-rocking atmosphere of ditto. Docked a point for having notably less to say about the Buckeye State than Electric Six did in “Escape From Ohio” last year.
[4]

Alfred Soto: This undeniably skillful outfit lets rolling toms and Matt Berninger’s Jove-in-the-clouds mumble get away with too much portent, and Berninger’s line about flying to Ohio on a swarm of bees tossed this helplessly into the realm of camp. But the urgency and sincere tug of the music won me over. Lucky for them that the economy is still in the tank; they can get away with garbled sentiments about money they’ll never earn.
[6]

Edward Okulicz: I find the smokey, dissolute stylings of The National to be so compelling, even their slighter nuggets contain moments — a drum fill here, a snatch of piano there — that hit me in the heart. And good thing too, because at least a quarter of this is nonsensical and a further quarter is meaningless. The rest is portentious, but in a good way.
[8]

Martin Skidmore: If you imagine a lightweight Joy Division with a deep, relaxed male vocal, you’ll be thereabouts. I can’t make any sense of the lyrics at all, which is a shame when they are so clear and foregrounded. Pleasant but dull.
[5]

Michaelangelo Matos: This song kind of turns a corner for my understanding of this band: the guitars are unmistakably majestic even if they’re careful about it, like WPA posters, and just as old-fashioned. So no, I don’t mind hearing their brooding at all; I just have a hard time caring.
[5]

Anthony Easton: Money and Blood, my favorite state in the Midwest, and buzzing guitars that move somewhere between attack dogs and paranoia… but not as violent as it could be.
[5]

Alex Macpherson: A ponderous, grey rumble, thunder sans lightning that fails to lead to a storm.
[4]

Ian Mathers: I’m going to quote a friend of mine here: “This is one of those bands that I spend zero time trying to talk people into and manifold hours discussing with other fans.” That being said, as much as “I still owe money to the money” etc. seems to be the bit firing discussion, I actually tend to focus a lot more on the next line: “I’ve never thought about love when I’ve thought about home.” This song, and the National as whole, aren’t depressive enough for that to be strictly woe-is-me, and the soft wonder in Matt Berninger voice as he sings it would undercut that reading anyway. As far as I can tell through the band’s always-gnomic melancholy, “Bloodbuzz Ohio” is as much about how your home changes when you’re away from it as anything else.
[9]

Jonathan Bradley: Nothing about “Bloodbuzz Ohio” is surprising, but nothing about it is disappointing either. This is a band that has got so proficient at executing their sound that playing to type seems like a triumph, not a crutch. This is classic National: a dusky Berninger baritone, a rhythm section hurtling pell-mell into disaster, a quiet storm of downtown dramaturgy. I could tell you that “Bloozbuzz” is sorrowful and impassioned and manages to come across as simultaneously beaten and triumphant, but I could communicate the same by telling you who made it. Also it has this nice bit where everything goes quiet and Berninger sings about being carried to Ohio by bees. Which you don’t get in every National song, I must admit.
[8]

Jonathan Bogart: These days whenever I listen to indie rock I feel like I’m tuning into Season Five of a critically-acclaimed drama I’ve never watched before: so many of the gestures and tropes, which mean so much to the people who have been following along religiously from the beginning, are opaque, even contentless, to me. Which is to say, I’m sure that Matt Berninger (I had to look that up) means Something Important by his affectless croon, but to me it just codes as stubborn laziness. Finally, an indie rock singer with an actual voice — but he won’t use it! The song itself rumbles along not unpleasantly.
[6]

And it’s still technically Wednesday in some parts of the world – not the part where I am, but still…

[Video][Website]
[6.50]

Alex Macpherson: Oh look, it’s Sophie Ellis-Bextor sounding bored while singing about crying over a generic commercial dance beat. I wonder if she can sustain this shocking change of direction.
[3]

John Seroff: “Bittersweet” indeed; this by-the-numbers disco sounds hollow and just past its prime, like a bonbon gone gray with chocolate bloom. Probably better Covergirl/Stella Artois/Godiva advertising than inspiring pop, so mission accomplished?
[5]

Keane Tzong: While I’ve long since passed being able to be “objective” about Sophie, who is a personal favorite of mine, I know (all too well) what it feels like to force enthusiasm for a release by a favorite act. That slight queasy sensation doesn’t seem to be at work here, so I’m going to give this an nice high score without reservations.
[9]

Doug Robertson: “Untouchable” didn’t exactly storm the charts when Girls Aloud did it, so it seems unlikely that Soph’ll do much better with this, umm… Is ‘homage’ the right word? No matter what you call it, when you wear your influences this blatantly, you need to be framing them a lot more interestingly.
[5]

Jonathan Bogart: Have there been any scientific studies conducted to prove that Sophie Ellis-Bextor has recorded more than one song? Seems to me that she just keeps releasing it over and over again under different titles. Luckily, I like it.
[7]

Matt Cibula: I may not like this as much as similar songs by Kylie Minogue, Cathy Dennis, Madonna, Donna Summer, the Andrea True Connection, Lisa Lisa and Cult Jam, [list elided for dramatic effect], or Billie Holiday, but it’s still pretty great. Also, Sophie Ellis-Bextor, to return your message, yes I will get marooned on a desert island with you.
[8]

Katherine St Asaph: The bridge here is batshit ridiculous. It’s also the place where I realized how massive this deserves to be.
[9]

Kat Stevens: I love this chorus: the harmonies are just divine and Sophie’s gentle delivery is lovely: “I know I shouldn’t go, but something makes me crave the heat…the fire in your touch, I always find so hard to beat”. Those lines could so easily have been embarrassingly wink-wink ‘sexy’ but Sophie nails them, effortlessly giving meaningless syllables some real poignancy. So it’s very frustrating on the verses where Soph has to go up half an octave and her voice changes from a soothing whisper to a teenage goth arguing with her parents.
[6]

Martin Skidmore: I didn’t catch any of the posh intonations that sometimes put me off her a bit, so this is a total success, if not a particularly original one.
[8]

Michaelangelo Matos: Like fake Gucci when real Gucci isn’t even that hot.
[3]

Edward Okulicz: Even if Sophie’s strong personality and penchant for style and intelligence isn’t quite coming through in her latest incarnation as fag-haggish would-be dancefloor goddess (with, admittedly, quite terrestrial chart placings), this is still several steps above Cascada-standard. Part of this is because of her underrated expressive range, sublime received pronunciation and a giddy abandon in her songwriting. Another part is because her songs just beat with that many more hooks and sonic touches than the average Freemasons-produced boshfest — even if it’s not that different, Sophie Ellis-Bextor is a superior pop star, and this is a superior example of all its creators’ crafts.
[8]

Pete Baran: “How can I deny The Feeling,” she says at the start of the song, and bearing in mind she is married to one of them, one cannot but read this as a coded song about her relationship. Or alternatively it’s yet another of her consummate ice queen pop songs which leans a touch on Visage and will probably be lucky to graze the top thirty in the UK. It’ll not look out of place on her greatest hits album ,though, and with a nice summers day and a pint of beer it might just be the best song ever written. About a bloke from The Feeling.
[7]

I think I saw her crossing the road in Leeds once. Vaguely remember her carrying a baguette…

[Video][Website]
[3.83]

Jonathan Bogart: Glorious girl-group-gone-stadium production, a vamping go-go orchestra squeezed into a three-by-five box, let down quite badly by a lyric that aims for sassy and hits precious, not even living up to the song’s own plastic-cathedral retro standards. So naturally it’s at its keenest, Technicolor best when she’s not singing lyrics, just babbling the chorus. (Surely it should have been titled “Bum Ba Dum”?) I like, even love, the lo-fi surf-garage riff, the not-quite-Motown beat, the orchestration squeezed into corners by compression; but I’m unable to buy into her cutesy, self-satisfied chirp or her declawed cattiness. It’s 2010, Kate; you can say the word “bitch.”
[7]

Edward Okulicz: It’s truly shocking that a moderately successful artist like Kate Nash, whatever your opinion of her, could consider this worthy of release, let alone as the lead single off an album. The construction is incredibly thin, with a single verse and a chorus that has no words and barely more of a melodic foundation, the drab lyrics carry rhymes you can see coming four lines in advance, delivered with what can only be called smug, self-satisfied and downright Lily Allen-esque conceit, with the same sense of forced whimsy to boot.
[1]

Anthony Easton: The last 30 seconds of this is the most annoying thing I have heard in mainstream pop in a long, long time. If you are hanging out by yourself, does that not mean you can stop singing?
[1]

Michaelangelo Matos: Well, the background has some sharpness and definition, and while that doesn’t make her words any less dumb, it does make them a little easier to deal with as they pass, even if she does sing them indolently.
[5]

John Seroff: There’s enough instrumentation here for two songs, but it doesn’t seem to add up to much. Too cutesy to be noisy, too ragged to be grand and too haphazard to be soulful; “Do Wah Doo” could use about ten more minutes in the oven.
[5]

Pete Baran: I quite like the music, but then Nash sings what has to be the dullest lyric in a career of writing dull lyrics over the top in her dull voice.
[4]

Alex Macpherson: The nadir of this song is easily that awful, smug pause as Nash thuddingly expounds, “Everyone thinks that girl’s a lady; but I don’t, I – think – that – girl’s – shady.” Aurally patting yourself on the back for a line so anodyne really isn’t a good look; when Nash goes on to petulantly declare that she’ll “just read a book instead”, one assumes it’ll be something on the level of Martine McCutcheon’s debut novel, say, or perhaps a choice selection from the Early Reader range. Also not a good look: singing as though gargling mouthwash, somehow inventing the concept of Ronson-lite production. Yes, liter than Mark Ronson. Nash pushes boundaries, but in the wrong direction.
[2]

Katherine St Asaph: It’d be nice if there were fewer songs about bimbos and more about bimbo-chasers, but when the former are this damn cheery, I don’t think I care. The snarkiest lines are the ones that don’t seem it — Kate says she’s going to read a book because that’s what Her Shadiness never does; she says she can hang out alone because unlike her, she’s above caring about relationships (even though she’s not really, of course). I don’t love this entirely — the clipped-short swear is exponentially less cute than Kate thinks it is, and I’d like the lady/shady rhyme forever excised from the language — but I like it well enough.
[7]

Matt Cibula: Weird how she says that the girl ain’t worthwhile cause there’s nothing there, because I don’t think there’s a lot here either. But the wishy-washy grade reflects my ambivalence, because I love the parts that this doesn’t end up being more than the sum of.
[5]

Additional Scores

Doug Robertson: [2]
Martin Skidmore: [2]
Alfred Soto: [5]

It’s British-Women-As-Genre Wednesday!!!…

[Video][Website]
[4.92]

Keane Tzong: Now is not the time for back-door bragging!
[4]

Alex Macpherson: “Better to be hated than luff! luff! luffed! for what you’re not” — indeed. What Marina is not is someone with either insightful things to say or interesting ways of saying them, nor a pop star whose presence or vocal mannerisms are anything other than grating.
[1]

Pete Baran: Can we describe that as blacking up in the video? It’s a nice little build, and a pleasant enough track, but it does feel a bit of an album track punted out due to lack of strong singles. And in a world of quirky female vocal stylists this isn’t doing enough to stand out.
[5]

Alex Ostroff: Almost a year ago, this was the song that sold me on Marina, convincing me that underneath all the tics and affectations, drama school mannerisms and songs about crackers, there was a thinking, feeling, introspective person who had something to say. Marina’s debut is good but flawed, and most of her songs have at least one moment where I wish she had pulled back a bit, but “I Am Not a Robot” remains the Crown Jewel in her discography. Building from plinky pianos and Regina Spektor-esque vocals, it slowly unfolds into something genuinely affecting and anthemic. In it, she ambivalently calls the object of her affections out on his calculated distance from emotion, risk and life in general. By the end, her confidence has grown, and the phrase “I’m vulnerable” has been transformed from an admission, into a declaration, and finally into a celebration.
[10]

Matt Cibula: I like the Abba-ELO-ness of this, but as always I think she is a clunky songwriter on the conceptual scale — is the song about him or about her?
[4]

Michaelangelo Matos: I’m charmed despite myself. I don’t do well with British pop’s archness, but this got me in its clutches rather pleasantly, which counts for something when it comes to archness. I guess you could snipe that the title chorus is a bit protest-against-pop-too-much, but whatever.
[6]

Alfred Soto: “Guess what — I am not a robot,” she assures at the 2:40 mark, at which the song finally starts to chug interestingly. The rest sounds like Sarah McLachlan yearning to be Annie Lennox.
[4]

Anthony Easton: I, for one, think that robots can dance, and feel, and love — this song is profoundly robotist, and that is wrong (nice returning of a metaphor to its original power).
[6]

Doug Robertson: It’s a shame that she’s not a robot, as that way we could all have one in our flats, coming up with subtly brilliant slices of electro pop on a regular basis. And also so that we could it take the voicebox to the robot repair shop to try and sort out the slightly annoying and gimmicky vocal inflexions that she seems unable to avoid breaking into on every other word.
[7]

Martin Skidmore: Marina doesn’t have the extraordinary control and astonishing swoops of Kate Bush, but it’s what she’s trying for.
[2]

Jonathan Bogart: I like her twitchy, cooing foghorn of a voice. I like the touch of electronic manipulation on the background vocals on the title phrase (though there should be more). I like or anyway admire the way the song crescendos without ever peaking or valleying. I don’t like the fact that when she says “let the drum beat drop” the beat doesn’t change at all, just gets slightly louder (at least will.i.am least gets this right). I don’t like, or more precisely don’t care about, the lyrics. When she writes something with half the wit with which she sings the word “vulnerable,” I’ll be interested.
[5]

John Seroff: This is the fourth single Marina and the Diamonds has put on the Jukebox and the third I’ve grappled with. Each time, it’s been the same problem: lovely voice, way too mannered. Her lyrics are ham-fisted, her ever-present affectations are uninspired and unhelpful to the songs and the production is consistently overblown. Once Marina finds a bit of restraint I might well come around, but her current blend of derivative diva-ishness and indulgent tics like ‘Robot’s minute-long coda of heartbeat leave her entirely too grating for me to embrace.
[5]

Katherine St Asaph: Marina keeps releasing singles that are just OK. I’m not averse to quirkiness, singer-songwriters or the two combined. I’ve no problem with her vocal style or lyrics — well, except for “let the drumbeat drop,” a lapse in judgment so glaring it merits an entire docked point. But I want her to make something brilliant, and this still isn’t it.
[5]

My favourite post of ours in a while? I’d say so, yeah…

[Website]
[5.93]

Kat Stevens: Is she STILL drunk?
[4]

Anthony Easton: 4 things that are important to remember about Courtney Love:
a) She is crazy. Even if she is not an addict, it is well established that she is not quite there; angry, unstable, out of control. She has been this way for a long time, maybe since her childhood. Crazy does not mean lacking skill, and it does not mean evil.
b) Much of the discourse around her does not deal with the crazy, but deals with her as a woman. She is dismissed frequently for being a bad mother, or being a slut, or being under the spell of a svengali. No one accuses Mick Jagger of being a bad father, no one says anything at all about Gene Simmons being a slut, and there is some delusion that the Jonas Brothers have control of their careers.
c) She is often quite accurate in her descriptions of people like Corgan.
d) One of the things that Love does brilliantly, and has done from the beginning, is to write about Los Angeles — as glamorous, as broken, as a punk rock Sunset Blvd; in works as disparate as Malibu, or her cover of Gold Dust Woman, or Sunset Strip. This one lacks the hope of Malibu, about not sitting down and dying, about leaving Malibu, or the gnashing, animal desire to become sober while enmeshed on cocaine like Gold Dust Woman; she is going back from the SF of Johnny Rotten’s Haven’t You Ever Felt Cheated to the place of original sin and endless decadence. This song quotes by extension Day of the Locust, and Ellroy, The Black Sperm of the Valley’s vengeance, and the elegiac sunlight of Laurel Canyon.
Bitch still has it.
[10]

Alfred Soto: A few lines in and we’re in Belladonna land, especially when Courtney Love rasps “I’m overwhelmed and undersexed” like Stevie Nicks blaming her wild heart for something or other. This could have been a deadly tasteful affair, but Love shows Miley Cyrus how to sound as if the song needed her instead of the other way around. Maybe it’s the way her larynx discovers an extra “eh-ah” sound beneath every other vowel.
[7]

Jonathan Bradley: Oh, the girls on the radio: they crash and burn, they fold and fade so slow. “Pacific Coast Highway” is Courtney Love beautiful and dying in a California apocalypse, somewhere she’s been many times before. And why not keep returning, when the results have been so fruitful in the past? But the West Coast isn’t what it used to be and neither is Hole; “Pacific Coast Highway” has its deliciously decaying pose down pat, but its hooks aren’t as tight as those on Celebrity Skin and its emotion isn’t as excoriating as were the band’s earlier records. I can’t call new Courtney Love material unwelcome, but I do suspect it may be unrewarding.
[5]

Al Shipley: Is there a song here? All I hear is an accumulation of all her stray cat vocal mannerisms, left out in the sun to calcify and dry out for a decade or so.
[3]

John Seroff: I can’t pretend to be a long-time fan of Courtney Love (I’d prefer Johnette Napolitano ten times out of ten) so it’s entirely possible that there’s something happening on “Pacific Coast Highway” that I’m overlooking. I do know what I want to hear that I’m not: charisma, poetry, a hook, a reason to listen again and not in that order. Even at the two minute mark this feels unnecessarily bloated; at 5:00, I was checking the timer to see how much more I had to endure. Never a good sign. [3]

Alex Ostroff: Courtney’s solo take on ‘Pacific Coast Highway’ from the 2007 leak of Nobody’s Daughter is an easy 10. It starts off acoustic, layers on piano and explodes into a release straight out of Fleetwood Mac’s playbook. The full-band version buries the vocals under guitars and draws out the grit and grain in Courtney’s voice. It’s much bigger than the original, but the strength of the songwriting and the intensity of her feelings are obscured by the changes — raw and angry and declarative where it was once pained and personal. The song still rocks, and the return of Hole is more than welcome, but part of me wishes that she’d left well enough alone.
[8]

Alex Macpherson: The ragged confessionalism of Courtney Love’s Nobody’s Daughter demos was an aesthetic that she wore with a brilliance that came from the sense that it was where she had always been destined to end up: a perfect collision of her still-astonishing lyrical gifts and turbulent trainwreck of a life. The wracked, bruised “Pacific Coast Highway”, an echo of — or possibly sequel to — “Malibu”, exemplified this. The exhaustion in Love’s voice is palpable, the desperation of lyrics like “I don’t know what to do with my hands now” – but what sticks is the woman’s sheer bloody-minded bravery, that towering melody reflecting the way in which she stands tall amidst the emotional wreckage. There’s something intensely romantic about this approach, and Love plays it up for all she’s worth. The way in which she takes a fairytale opening line — “I knew a boy who came from the sea” — and immediately twists it into something personal and darker — “He was the only boy who ever knew the truth about me” — is a magnificent testament to her skill. Love’s bare-bones solo demo from last year remains the superior iteration of the song, though this reworked version with a full band emphasises its strength over its exhaustion in a rousing sort of way; but fundamentally, “Pacific Coast Highway” is too strong a song for its quality to be much affected by any changes.
[8]

Martin Skidmore: The strummed backing here puts me in mind of the Fall (which would make Kurt Brix or something…?), which is a good thing to evoke. Actually, I shouldn’t be flippant about Courtney’s famous relationship, in that this song sounds as if it is about that — so I don’t know why the band sound so laid back (think “Bill Is Dead” or “Edinburgh Man”). The plaintive sound doesn’t entirely match the lyrics, which are more desperate and aggressive, and that comes through a little in her performance. Anyway, it is still pretty compelling and interesting.
[7]

Tal Rosenberg: Song’s a bit country, but one couldn’t tell from the way Courtney sings; she’s mewling her words instead of hoarsely spewing them. She sounds pilled out of her brain, but not weary–she just sounds bored. For West Coast dreaminess, we’ll always have “Malibu.”
[4]

Edward Okulicz: Kind of half a bite of their own “Boys On The Radio” with a little bit of The Church’s “Under The Milky Way” thrown in for good measure, it’s been interesting to watch the progression of this song since it was a Fleetwood-esque Courtney solo demo. Overall the rawking-up that’s been applied is pretty agreeable, but the god-awful and tuneless outro it’s sprouted should have been left on the cutting-room floor. Nonetheless, the first three and a half minutes are a compelling narrative — Courtney is vocally shot even if the studio trickery hides it, but that just gives it a windblown, poetic charm.
[7]

Chuck Eddy: Interestingly, in one of the few times I’ve been to L.A. in my life, I once drove the Pacific Coast Highway to Malibu, which was also the name of my favorite Hole song since Live Through This. Plus, when I first heard Live Through This, I partially dismissed it as a not-as-good version of Sonic Youth, who did a different song called “Pacific Coast Highway” on Sister. Haven’t decided whose is better (just played them back-to-back — they could use Courtney’s singing and she could maybe use their guitars. They’ve got more menace, but also more schtick. Hole’s is more lush, but also more same-old, and Hole may well have a more mobile rhythm section too, but I have no idea who’s in it these days). This is good, either way: California-style jangle rock that rocks harder than most “hard rock” nowadays. Could’ve almost fit right in on the acoustic side of Guns N’ Roses’ Lies.
[8]

Matt Cibula: Ho to the hum, although I guess nostalgists and Drive-By suckers will like it fine.
[3]

Ian Mathers: Courtney Love’s singing voice is now some weird blend of Chrissie Hynde and Stevie Nicks (i.e. awesome), but that’s pretty much the only place that the last few years seem to have left a mark. If anything, “Pacific Coast Highway” is a hell of a lot more classic rock in its sound than this non-fan is used to from Hole. I feel like I’d respond to this more if I felt more strongly (for good or ill) about Love. As it is, the song is perfectly serviceable even if it seems to lean too heavily on Context a few times, but it doesn’t exactly make me eager to hear more new Hole material.
[6]

Who were those masked men? Who gives a stuff?…

[Video][Website]
[4.70]

Alfred Soto: Everlast’s “What It’s Like,” served with a tall Pike Place coffee and sugar cookie.
[4]

Mallory O’Donnell: Congratulations! Great, great track. I will have to lie down after this one !!
[3]

Chuck Eddy: Nobody likes this group, right? Pretty sure I read that somewhere. Was gonna grade it leniently regardless, for making me remember that I didn’t totally hate “Under The Milky Way” by the Church. But then it stopped even reminding me of that.
[3]

John Seroff: I love Dangermouse more than the next guy, but really, one Gorillaz is enough, thanks.
[5]

Matt Cibula: The textures are nice enough but there is no enjoyment to be had here without way too much effort. This is one of the problems I had with the Shins in the first place.
[5]

Iain Mew: The downbeat, monochrome backing here brings out strongly how much I love James Mercer’s voice, elastically springing from exclamatory to subdued and back again, always an assured splash of colour. Modest Mouse aside, this is the best use anyone’s put it to in a very long time.
[8]

Alex Ostroff: “The High Road” is catchy enough, in a sleepy sort of way, but sonically it’s essentially the folkier songs from Chutes Too Narrow ornamented with bits of electrodribble. The lyrics are opaque and morose, the drums shuffle and the melody embeds itself in your subconscious. Still, it never quite reaches the heights of perfect pop that Mercer is capable of. Broken Bells might be his main outlet at the moment, but it sounds and feels like an interesting side project, and not much more.
[7]

Ian Mathers: I randomly caught the end of this song on Letterman one night, which only makes this version more disappointing; the refrain of “Tell all of your friends you’ve gone” sounded a hell of a lot better being belted out live than coming through Danger Mouse’s increasingly stifling production murk. In fact, here the ending includes an even draggier coda than the version I saw. There, “The High Road” was streamlined but appealingly shaggy, and was probably Mercer’s most winning vocal performance since the golden days of Chutes Too Narrow; here, it just confirms my feeling that both of the participants here peaked way too early for us to still be paying attention.
[4]

Anthony Easton: Has a solid Band energy, and jangles in all the right places; half a measure rougher, and it might just have something
[6]

Martin Skidmore: I have some residual fondness for DM from Gnarls Barkley, but this is rubbish.
[2]