If I’d planned ahead, we could have had an All-Hat Wednesday. Ah well…

[Video][Myspace]
[6.33]

David Raposa: I don’t want to sound like the sort of bandwagoneer that’s going to jump off the love train when “all-knowing ” pop-cult dinks like ESPN’s Bill Simmons claim Mr. Gibbs is “the savior of gangsta rap,” but by the sound of this stiffy, it’s like Gibbs started to believe the hype before the hype even really hit. This is big-balls Scarface (as in Pacino) swagger for a guy that, from the mixtape tracks I heard prior, sounds his best when he’s keeping things real and a little more modest. Or maybe I just was never hearing his shit right.
[4]

Michaelangelo Matos: The devotion this guy has inspired is impressive. But as someone who hasn’t and isn’t going to download everything to separate the wheat from the chaff (I loved “County Bounce” a while back, was bored stiff by some hotly tipped .zip comp of freestyles, and haven’t had much of an impression beyond them), I’m glad to hear this. It’s serviceable-plus, which seems about right; the workaday is his theme, right? He sounds hungry, another plus. And if the hook isn’t championship, it lodges in my brain pretty well. Of course I want more. But when someone’s plainly talented, it’s OK to settle.
[7]

Martin Skidmore: This is terrific: Southern hip hop from someone with a rather Tupacish delivery and two very different paces, and he sounds completely right at both speeds. He’s a consistently interesting lyricist too, with strong and intelligent lines and some of the best internal rhyming I’ve heard in a while. The production is moody, strings and beats, just right. I hope he’s going to be big.
[9]

Chuck Eddy: Convincingly downtrodden and depressed opening, no less drab for it. Then he raps fast over slow music, Bone Thugs-style (always a potentially interesting concept on paper, but an ultimately boring one in real life). Doesn’t sound like much else I’ve heard lately, and I have to admit, “We screaming ‘fuck the world’” makes for a halfway inspirational cheer, in its own dumb nihilistic way. And the background orchestrations have some beauty in them. Doesn’t mean I’ll want to hear him rhyme vegetables with testicles again, though.
[6]

Al Shipley: You shouldn’t use a title like that unless the chorus is massive, and the chorus is the exact moment when the song sinks from promising to middling.
[5]

Jonathan Bogart: Not quite the nihilistic epic the title suggests, it turns out to be more of a smooth-riding chant with uneasy trap percussion. Gibbs shows a real mastery of flow here, with dense verses that don’t quite have the anger I was hoping for, and is let down by a chorus that could be swapped out for any other sentimental upping. Solid enough to demand returning to, and I’ll bellow along happily with “fuck the world,” but it could have been more.
[7]

In case you’re wondering, this isn’t Katy Red of “Melpamene Block Party” New Orleans sissy bounce fame…

[Video][Myspace]
[7.57]

Chuck Eddy: I was confused and thinking this was going to be Katy Red, of “Melpamene Block Party” New Orleans sissy bounce fame. But nope. Just some vague down-the-drain dance chick of no notable distinction. Don’t mind the dubby parts, but it sure doesn’t sound like she’s on much of a “mission” to me.
[4]

David Raposa: Giving herself a shout-out in the song title might be a bit much for a lass that’s just two years removed from being able to legally drink in the clubs she’s now prepped to rule, but the way Katy B just latches onto this beat and casually glides across its grime-y facade, I’ll gladly forgive this prideful indiscretion. And if (as her Wiki page claims) she is working on Ms. Dynamite’s next album, then she can big-up herself until she’s hoarse.
[8]

Cecily Nowell-Smith: Club night as hall of mirrors: Katy B’s crystalline voice trailing bright echoes behind, dark doubles below. She sings about being trapped by music, taken over, fighting to keep yourself lost in the sound, and moulds herself so neatly against Benga’s instrumental it’s like it couldn’t have existed without her. The whole song’s like that shake in the air in front of a speaker, like a heat haze, a moment you can just feel but can’t hold in your hands. Near perfection.
[9]

Anthony Easton: What is the vocal effect that she uses on those double oo sounds? It’s new and exciting, and makes me shake my ass a little bit.
[9]

Martin Skidmore: I like dubstep producer Benga, and this is interestingly jagged. The awkward rhythms perhaps do Katy no favours, meaning her vocal is often rather stilted. Oddly if I think of it as Benga ft. Katy B, I rather like it, but as a Katy B single I am far less keen. I think she’s a talented singer, but she doesn’t often get to make a line flow here, let alone to really open up.
[6]

Alex Macpherson: The mutual suspicion with which the British underground and mainstream regard each other means that landmark pop moments such as this are a lot rarer than they should be, but feel all the more special when they do come along. It’s notable for many reasons — the first release on newly-legit former pirate station Rinse FM, the launch of a female singer’s career from a scene that has traditionally emphasised the auteurship of producers and MCs, the first dubstep single to crash the top 5 in its own right. It’s also important that Katy B has cut her teeth on some of the finest UK funky cuts of recent years, such as DJ NG’s “Tell Me”, Rinse FM boss Geeneus’ “As I”: she can represent the UK underground because she’s been immersed in it. That said, “Katy on a Mission” transcends any particular scene: it slots neatly into a lineage of dance classics whose greatness lies in their startlingly accurate depiction of the clubbing experience, a lifestyle you feel Katy B knows well and loves. She captures that out-of-body detachment you feel moving around a venue; those brief, momentary encounters with other ravers that you’re never sure are hostile or flirtatious; the jouissance of the drop; the odd feeling of security that comes with being perfectly at home in a situation; the dread of the night ending you try to push to the back of your mind. Every second line is an evocative flash of recognition — “elevating higher as my body’s moving lower”, “when we erupt into the room”. Those nights stick with you even a few days later, when you’re ostensibly going about your quotidian life — which is where the excellent B-side “Louder” comes in — and hearing them documented with such precision is the next best thing to actually being there.
[9]

Jonathan Bogart: At first I misheard her as a sort of halfway point between the Lily Allen wing of “quirky” female singer-songwriters and the Sophie Ellis-Bextor wing of “icy” electro divas, and I still like that pop (not pop) reading. But apparently this is UK funky; if so, I guess I like UK funky. Because I definitely like this.
[8]

He’s not number one anymore…

[Video][Website]
[5.67]

Kat Stevens: Tinchy is scratching his head and trying to remember how drunk he must have been when he gave his girlfriend the spare set of keys; then after a while he realises he doesn’t actually mind having her hanging around a bit more after all. It’s a rather sweet subplot to the main attraction, i.e. the best acid house pastiche I’ve heard this summer. S-Express’s lazy hi-hat sound, hands-in-the-air piano riff, EXTRA SNARE DRUMS and squiggling 303 underneath. I sincerely hope that the rest of Tinchy’s UK R&B chums jump on this particular sonic bandwagon.
[9]

David Raposa: Love the shut-the-fuck-up-and-STROBE backdrop so much that I wish to holy hell Tinchy wasn’t trying to pitch some awkward and frighteningly emo “can’t live without you” game (& inna “Wearing My Rolex” style, no less). Some dude (or lady dude; I’m a hep cat) with some actual swagger should jack this beat & the girl and make this banger really bang.
[6]

Martin Skidmore: Another Fraser T. Smith production, dance-pop with a nice enough female vocal hook and Tinchy rapping on it. He has nothing interesting to say, or any exciting ways to say it, so it’s dependent on the music, and this works well enough. It’s punchy and energetic, with enough going on that Tinchy’s undistinguished part is all but irrelevant.
[6]

Chuck Eddy: Still getting the idea that, the closer grime inches toward American r&b, the duller and more monotonal it sounds. I could be totally missing the direction it’s taking, of course. But this is still pretty one-note, beyond the glitchy parts.
[4]

Jonathan Bogart: Heretofore I’ve only known Tinchy’s name as a groan the UK contingent makes about modern pop; on this showing he’s another JaySean DeRulyaz with an East London accent. The female vocals make me think of cooler, more mysterious electro from the 90s, but it’s not enough to push past the galloping washes of undifferentiated sound.
[5]

Additional Scores

Michael Waters: [4]

And this seems as good a place to end the week as any…

[Video][Website]
[6.31]

Kat Stevens: Why is the sky blue? Because of the way light reflects on bits of dust in the atmosphere. Why are there bits of dust in the atmosphere? Because there just are. Why? Because! But WHY? Stop tugging on my sleeve or you won’t get any pudding. Whyyyy? Because I hate you. Why? Because you keep saying ‘why’. Oh.
[3]

Al Shipley: If you told me this was from Justin Bieber’s ‘difficult’ second album, I’d believe you.
[5]

Iain Mew: This is one of the most unexpectedly amazing things I’ve ever heard on mainstream radio. Never mind your puny lyrical robot metaphors (whose meta use here is cutely incidental to the appeal), Sky is actually totally subsumed into the machine music, used just as one more icily beautiful sound effect to be deployed precisely for maximum pleasure. There’s something weirdly, hugely comforting as well as emotional about the intricate, disconnected reverie that results. I can’t get enough of the song and I’m used to having to go to J-Pop for anything like it!
[9]

Alex Macpherson: In the light of pop’s multi-directional spiral down into a vortex of suck over the past few years, aided enthusiastically by the likes of Katy Perry, La Roux and Ke$ha, one feels almost pathetically grateful to be greeted by a new major label female pop starlet who isn’t immediately actively hateful. Sadly, that’s about the extent of Sky Ferreira’s impact here: not necessarily a final judgment, given that “One” is a total non-song entirely lacking in anything for even the most gifted performer to latch on to, but getting so comprehensively outshone by those tinkling pizzicato synths isn’t promising.
[4]

Mallory O’Donnell: If this had been released in 1985, it would have been ahead of its time. But only by a year. Its lack of identity makes it pliable as anything, though, and it gets floppier still the more you play with it. For once, that’s a good thing. And besides, anything more rugged than this in her synth-pop would probably turn Sky into a fly on a windscreen.
[5]

Jonathan Bogart: Less individuated than I’d hoped; it’s a solid song, constructed well and with reasonable emotions, but she’s too bland to give me a reason to care. Further listens may reveal a personality, in which case tack on a couple of points.
[6]

Michaelangelo Matos: “I’m not a robot but I feel like one”, through Auto-tune and with the one repeating-pulsating a predetermined number of times, should push my enough-fucking-robots-already button pretty hard, but this doesn’t. I think it’s because it opts for soft focus rather than robot bash. (Everyone in pop wants to be Daft Punk; unfortunately, it’s the Daft Punk of Human After All.) This is defined but it’s also gauzy, like a less affected “Together in Electric Dreams”.
[7]

Anthony Easton: Finally a robot as a metaphor of failure and decay, with that skipped CD repeating that is just on the edge of being technolust for failed pasts.
[8]

Hillary Brown: Sure, it’s a bit empty, but that’s the point, isn’t it? There’s an intelligent melancholy at work in the melody here, shades of the Smiths, and that adds some depth.
[6]

Martin Skidmore: This is co-written with the excellent Marit Bergman. It’s endearingly clumsy electropop, her vocal bright and bouncy but inelegant and sort of distant, the music clumping along perkily, the whole thing sounding kind of amateurish, which is odd from such experienced producers.
[7]

Katherine St Asaph: This has so many elements I love: vocals pureed to the consistency of milk (certainly a better treatment than the Procrustean autotune licks that are more standard), quacky synthesized guys echoing the chorus, frippery in the background and Marit Bergman, whose involvement I never would have guessed until I looked it up and everything made sense. I’m sure, too, that a lot of you will appreciate her saying she’s not a robot.
[7]

David Raposa: No doubt some of the girl-as-robot / Robyn haters in the land of TSJ will rip this track a new one, especially since the track’s skint narrative reads like Robyn For Dummies. But even the torch and pitchfork crowd should give Bloodshy & Avant due props — they might be cribbing their moves from their Swedish brethren (and sistren), but no one can say that they don’t have those moves down pat. Not only do B&A infect Sky Ferreira’s pleasantly airy voice with a convincing case of ones and zeroes, but they also construct a backing track robust enough to switch from the insistent neon throb of the verses to a brief-yet-glorious ethereal bridge that’s the stuff of the most lurid electric dreams.
[8]

Alfred Soto: As semaphore from a digitized adolescent world, this is unexpectedly gorgeous. If goth boys show allegiance to the likes of Interpol and Sleigh Bells, who want to sound like insufficiently petulant machines, let’s hear it for Sky, who convincingly sounds like one. How normal — you hate your body and the responses you think it inspires in others, so why not wish you could shed corporeal forms by becoming a Twitter signal or text transmission? Take that, Robyn.
[7]

SARRRUHSUN!!!…

[Video][Website]
[4.75]

David Raposa: Before I get to agushin’, there’s plenty about this song that bugs the shit out me; for instance, while I’m all for locker room camaraderie, that “back against the wall” stuff is taking things a bit too far. And those moments when I can envision a shot of Chesney righteously strumming his guitar against a sunset background transitioning to slo-mo scrimmage footage are just too much. Still, there’s something charming about this tune’s unapologetic corniness that makes me wish I was on those sidelines, smacking some kid upside his helmet as he ran out to the huddle with the next play. I’ll put the over/under for TSJ Friday Night Lights shout-outs at 4 (not counting mine), but this quaint slice of the simple sports life reminds me more of Hoosiers.
[6]

Chuck Eddy: Friday Night Lights country, revolving around high school football (a subgenre I’d have no problem at all hearing more of), like Brooks & Dunn’s “Indian Summer” and Lee Brice’s “Sumter County Friday Night”. Also, a better would-be Don Henley update than Jessie James’s “Boys In The Summer.” It’s also six and a half minutes long — unheard of for a country single. And, this being Chesney, bittersweet, of course. Effectively so.
[7]

Frank Kogan: Chesney is lightly pleasant, as always, but the brown autumnal arrangement saturates this track so thoroughly it’s as inert as a photograph – feels like an old scrapbook, not like football.
[4]

Alex Ostroff: The texture is nice and his voice is warm, but he fails to give us anything to connect with. There’s a frustrating lack of specific moments, people or memories that would elevate “The Boys of Fall” from general nostalgia to something personal and real.
[4]

Martin Skidmore: Oddly its lyric is often defiant and heroic, but the mood is wistful and sombre: I kept expecting something in the words to suggest the thrill of playing for the school is illusory or transient or the narrator’s life has fallen into some Angstromesque search for that former greatness, but it’s not there. Still, this disconnect is at least interesting, which Kenny often isn’t.
[5]

Michaelangelo Matos: Why people think country music is full of simple-minded nostalgia.
[3]

Anthony Easton: Being focused on tomorrow, and the corrective of a toxic nostalgia which reduces the cult of American homosociality into a autoerotic obsession of what would never be is one of Chesney’s major themes,and this obviously does not change in this track, though it’s more about sports than rock and roll. That said, there is something so tender and sweet about his desire to be 17 again that I find myself caught up. I wanna be a boy like that, and I wanna be a man who remembers what it means to be a boy like that. Which means there is an effectiveness to this.
[5]

Alfred Soto: American men are more given to autumnal kitsch than the sweethearts who supposedly pine for the boys of fall, so I don’t expect Chesney’s voice to slice through this corn like Miranda Lambert or Lee Ann Womack’s; in fact, Chesney celebrates being famous in the kind of small town that Lambert found so repellent. So allow this hunky Anglo-Saxon lout his pretty acoustic mythos — one more time, and no worse than the dozen others he’s proffered.
[4]

See, we were meant to have an all-country Wednesday, but then our editor happened…

[Video][Website]
[4.44]

Martin Skidmore: I loved Big & Rich, so I was looking forward to this, but there’s something wrong. Maybe it’s too straightforward country rocking, maybe it’s missing their extraordinary genrefucking flair, maybe it’s lacking any detectable irony or humour, maybe it’s just that I miss the great vocal combination. It’s reasonably catchy and energetic, but it feels routine and flat.
[5]

Hillary Brown: Oh, lord. John Rich checks off the boxes on the “country-music” form but adds no self-awareness to compensate for the perfunctory manner of the exercise. With a strong vocal performance, it’s possible the song could have overcome the “country music that makes hipsters’ ears bleed” lyrics, but, sadly, that’s not to be found.
[3]

Anthony Easton: I love how badly behaved John Rich is — genuinely in the sense of drunken fist fights and too much cocaine badly behaved — and I keep hoping that the stories that get told with a tut-tut in blogs like 9513 and Nashville Gab will translate to a kind of musical break through. I have partied with cowboys and I don’t doubt that Mr Rich is capable of the debauchery they are capable of, but why can’t I hear the whiskey and pig grease dripping all over this lame ass attempt at pleasure?
[6]

Alfred Soto: Since I haven’t thought about Big & Rich since 2006, I expected more from John than a reclamation of the genre for the likes of frat guys much younger than him, especially when Luke Bryan’s doing more for whiskey-and-frisky. “Highfalutin’ clubs” don’t need mustachioed assholes like John showing patrons how to have a hellraisin’ time. Formally, though, this is interesting: the stop-start dynamics, John’s non-asshole vocal, and taut soloing are the good time they promise. In an age when Brad Paisley’s made this sort of thing unnecessary, let’s hear it for rowdiness.
[5]

Alex Ostroff: Rich’s country-and-proud-of-it persona always verged on cartoonish, and it seems he’s finally embraced it. “Country Done Come to Town” is all signifiers and precious little substance — twang, Hank, and Howdy’s. His days as a horse of a different colour are behind him; still, he can’t help but write songs that swing, even when he’s playing it safe.
[6]

Chuck Eddy: Has a ZZ Top riff. Has some semblance of a ZZ Top groove. Doesn’t have much else. Maybe Big Kenny will hook up with Jerrod Niemann.
[6]

Frank Kogan: Country comes to town with a funky metal riff, but the track plods anyway, and Rich isn’t just short the harmonies that he and Big Kenny once created, he’s missing Kenny’s expansive heart, too. Big & Rich were a traveling carnival and interplanetary roadshow, stuffing everything they could into the parade. Now John’s just another chip-on-his-shoulder country boy who’s gonna show the city slickers a thing or two, and learn nothing in return.
[4]

Michaelangelo Matos: This is about as soft-pedaled as it gets. Just cliché upon cliché, the occasional semi-clever line only making the verve his old duo had on their first album seem further away.
[3]

David Raposa: When Rich tries to put some actual boot scoot into this boot scuff of a song with an all-together-now “hell yeah,” all I done got to offer in return is a resounding “heck no.” And when Rich namedrops Hank, which is a roundabout and half-ass way to invoke the sort of shit-kicking sass this song sorely lacks, all I can think about is Hank Jr. shilling for the NFL as if he wishes he were rolling over in his grave. PS — I really hope that any folks glomming onto some sorta class-centric “fuck Gucci & that namebrand bullshit” message here (which Rich is and isn’t hinting at) actually try and shop for some Lucchese boots. (Caveat emptor: you’re gonna need that 5% discount.)
[2]

Fair to say we have some issues with these boys…

[Video][Website]
[3.75]

Hillary Brown: More than a decade on, they haven’t gotten any less boring.
[4]

David Raposa: “Estuary / won’t you take me” — they still got it! I’m resigned to the fact that these dudes (RIP Carlos D) are perfectly happy to sit in their little mid-tempo post-punk niche, forever adjusting that one picture frame that may or may not be crooked. This is one of their better takes on reinventing that particular go-nowhere wheel (as my score suggests), but I’m the sort of business-casual faux-Goth that actually gives their 3rd album an on-purpose listen from time to time, so adjust your expectations accordingly.
[7]

Alfred Soto: For their fourth album Notorious, Duran Duran hired Nile Rodgers and the Borneo Horns to enliven half-written tracks. The lead single boasted the line “Don’t monkey with my business.” For their fourth album Interpol didn’t call Nile Rodgers, and there isn’t a horn in sight. The lead single boasts the lines, “Please police me/I want you to PO-lice me but keep it clean.” If slower and longer signifies maturity, I wonder what they’ll call their work when one or more of them joins Alcoholics Anonymous.
[2]

Martin Skidmore: If you took the bassline from Black Sabbath’s “Iron Man” and gave it to a band in thrall to Joy Division, this is roughly what you would get. I liked Joy Division, but I don’t think they’re a good template at all, and Interpol have none of their sinister power, however much they ramp up the volume as this goes on.
[2]

Michael Waters: It starts out resembling someone doing David Bowie on Stars in Their Eyes, until it gets dragged through a car wash into the 21st Century by sterile drums and guitars so inoffensive and nondescript I almost forgot to write about how inoffensive and nondescript they are.
[5]

Jonathan Bogart: Joy Division comparisons have long since outlived their usefulness. The Church comparisons, on the other hand…
[5]

Mallory O’Donnell: Interpol will always know how to manage an atmosphere well enough that they can afford to do silly things. Like try their hardest at an Ozzy-style whiskey & weed vocal intro. Like stress a corny reference to their name (“police me / I want you to po-lice me / but keep it clean”) so obviously it almost becomes cute. Like make a tactically adequate R.E.M. song that pops out of the middle (~3:25) of a what is outwardly nothing more than a really long bridge. Like serve as a handy reminder that The Moody Blues will always be more important and influential than Pink Floyd.
[4]

Michaelangelo Matos: People are so fucking dumb.
[1]

Eh, he’s a thing, I guess…

[Website]
[4.33]

Anthony Easton: Rucker has a really smooth voice, it fits much better into the metric of current chart country then I ever thought possible. This should be interesting at least, but knowing the notes and singing the song are not the same, and he still does not play the emotions with very much skill — it’s too happy for a heart break song, and not angry enough for a fuck you.
[4]

Martin Skidmore: The acoustic guitar on this is very nice, but everything else is competent and bland, country with soft-rock leanings and zero pain in the performance, which is a killer for a lost-love song like this. He sounds self-satisfied rather than brokenhearted.
[3]

Alfred Soto: Rucker’s widescreen warble is ideal for country, and ideal for the asides and one-liners here (he makes a pot of coffee and pours it down the drain). Although this doesn’t cut very deep, I don’t think Rucker intends it as such: he’s so guileless that I can be listening to a decent guy describing his relationship trouble, albeit one who surprises me with his instinct for finding the joke just when I fear he’s getting mawkish. If Brad Paisley and John Rich wrote songs for Rucker, it’d be a real American Saturday night.
[6]

Michaelangelo Matos: I confess, all I can keep thinking throughout this song is where the line “Yeah, the dolphins make me cry” could fit best. The answer, of course, is everywhere, even if the scenario it lays out wouldn’t allow it in without it blowing the whole thing. Points for maturity, I guess.
[5]

Alex Ostroff: This is the first time I’ve heard one of Rucker’s country singles without thinking of Hootie & the Blowfish, which I suppose makes this a type of success. That said, “Come Back Song” is indistinguishable from any number of midtempo country songs. It’s pleasantly anonymous, save for some nice guitar flourishes here and there. Is it better to sound out of place on CMT, or to fit in so thoroughly that you’re barely noticeable?
[5]

David Raposa: I don’t know whether that blink-and-it’s-gone faux-Harrison guitar solo is a stroke of genius or just stroke-addled, but the rest of this song — from its inauthentic burnt-coffee aw-shucking to its half-ass attempts to pitch some baby-come-back woo — is the sort of offensively inoffensive (middle of the) road-pizza that Herr Hootie is more than happy to serve to today’s country music listener. Madam, if Darius is singing about you, I hope you know enough to stay the hell away.
[3]

There’s a lot of gurning in this video, but it’s quite pretty apart from that…

[Video][Website]
[5.25]

Alfred Soto: What the bloody hell is this — a misbegotten football chant? A Coldplay anthem? A Go West b-side?
[2]

David Raposa: The glittering big-bottomed bloopy gait of this tune’s backing track, I can totally get with. The faux-soulful twerpiness of the vocalist, on the other hand…
[4]

Martin Skidmore: I know nothing about him, but he appears to be yet another reasonably talented electronica producer with no vocal talent. Does no one tell these fools that they can’t sing?
[3]

Katherine St Asaph: Somebody get this vocalist a throat stent before his half-hearted whine does any more damage to a perfectly good song.
[5]

Jonathan Bogart: Pleasant mood music, but lacks the punch, sizzle, and burn of superb modern pop. That’s fine; more delicate ears require more sensitive sounds.
[7]

Mallory O’Donnell: The frilly edges here are what please me most — the overripe jazz in the vocal, the self-conscious bow-out in the delivery of “only you get me excited,” the little squelches of filtered pink noise rippling beneath the margins of the choruses. I also personally enjoy the feeling of uncertainty regarding the sincerity of the pop moves here, but that’s probably about where I part ways from most folks.
[7]

Erick Bieritz: It’s a good song, buoyant, shameless in its classic pop aspirations. But it’s the video that really sticks as one of the highlights of the year. If nothing else, the newfound habit of marching lockstep down the street, imagining a column of polychromatic clones in tow, will keep listeners watching for the next Primary 1 single.
[8]

Anthony Easton: Video looks like it was made at Burning Man, but I love the Afro-futurist queen, the empty men in brightly coloured suits, and whatever is happening with the rain barrels. He has an interesting voice, as well.
[6]

Amazingly, we’ve never reviewed this lot before (well, not in this lifetime, anyhow)…

[Video][Website]
[6.40]

Michaelangelo Matos: Did Michael Franti write this?
[5]

Chuck Eddy: Partly Sugarland’s pop reggae move, apparently. Cute. Country could probably use more reggae in it. But I actually like the oddball ’70s AM radio novelty approximation of African skiffle shuffle (yeah, I realize there’s no such thing) at the beginning way more than the actual song or strums.
[6]

Alex Ostroff: A tossed-off trifle, light and frothy and a little bit freestyle. It starts off with some quasi-beatboxing before Jennifer Nettles’ warm country tones start to wrap around syllables, stretching and repeating them: infectious doit-n-doits and wuh-ohs and go-uh-ohs. Halfway through she switches into white-girl patois à la Vitamin C or No Doubt before bringing back the honky-tonk for the chorus. This sort of genre-hopping could easily come off as laboured or fall apart under the weight of self-proclaimed quirkiness. That it hangs together almost effortlessly, without calling attention to itself, is testament to both Sugarland’s talent and their sense of fun. A late-summer jam if there ever was one.
[7]

Anthony Easton: I am assuming sugar sticky sweet stuff is semen. Also, the reggae does not work nearly as well as Nettles thinks it does. Lastly, the video is creepy.
[6]

David Raposa: A little charmer of a tune (despite the singer’s nasal tendencies) that amounts to a pleasant shoulder shrug, but don’t mind me upping my score due to woefully parochial country music stations taking offense to the (ably executed!) reggae-ish bridge and the (somewhat tasteful!) AutoTune call-and-response that happens near the end. If y’all are giving this tune an unnecessary whitewash while Big & Rich tunes sit on your playlist, please get one (1) clue.
[7]

Martin Skidmore: I dislike most music one might describe as quirky, but I like this: maybe because it sounds like the natural outcome of an unusual personality rather than someone trying to be interesting. It also has a lively and pretty tune.
[7]

Hillary Brown: The verse is good, better than passable, but then the chorus shambles in and breaks out into a sort of fabulous tap dance and the song jumps up to a completely different level. This is what choruses are supposed to be –motivation to keep listening to the song — and this one makes you want to put the tune on repeat for the rest of the afternoon.
[7]

Renato Pagnani: This saunters casually, with playful grace and an off-the-cuff feel that really works for it. The lyrics are incorporeal, but the melody, of the easy sing-a-long variety that betrays how well-constructed the song really is, not only sticks, but burrows its way into your head and sets up camp.
[7]

Edward Okulicz: As novel as someone else affecting Gwen Stefani’s oddball affectations is, the bits that hook are diluted — the chorus should have been shorter, sharper — and overall, it’s a little bit meandering. Let’s say an adorable 2:30 novelty stretched a little too far.
[5]

Jonathan Bogart: This would be the first Sugarland song I’ve listened to on purpose, but I can’t imagine it’s representative. Which would be a pity — I like the clipped calypso swing of it (at least when she’s not attempting patois), the homemade-sample beat, and is that an accordion providing texture? More pop-country should sound more pop-island.
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