We started this process by promising you Ke$ha. We end this process by giving you Ke$ha. Happy New Year, folks…

[Video][Website]
[5.20]

David Moore: I’m trying my odds at stacking the controversy deck again this year, though I couldn’t find anything quite as galvanizing as “Combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell,” which was the most controversial Jukebox song of 2009 by a mile. Ke$ha must be deserving of the title this year, what with a few Jukeboxers devoting untold thousands of words to her music and others not really giving her the time of day. Looking forward to critical whiplash and I hope the group doesn’t disappoint. It’s probably my favorite Ke$ha song, but not for the first half, which is enjoyable enough — the gore mixed with adolescent taunting is genuinely weird if nothing else (sue me, I laughed when she said “anus”). But at the chorus Ke$ha emerges from a haze of dry ice and smog (I hear “I am Cannibal!” like “I am Iron Man!”) with back-up dancers in rags, pseudo-hipster zombies shuffling listlessly (oh, they’re just hippies; I guess that makes sense). And, eschewing the two faces we’re used to — “Tik” with her goof-rap grin and “Tok,” the emotive sadface — she calls them all to action — OWWWOWOOWWOWWWWOOOAH. Her voice does something here that I haven’t heard from her before, it breaks a little before settling into a piercing yawp; it’s powerful, but you also get a sense of vulnerability that seems more apparent in her often inept live performances. Sensing their leader faltering, the hippie zombies all back her up, lift her in a throne. That moment crystallizes something I like about Ke$ha generally — there’s a lot of smoke and mirrors, sure, but there she is, believing in it, embarrassing herself for it when necessary (or unavoidable). She doesn’t have the kind of professional competence that makes Katy Perry seem so disingenuous. There’s an earnestness in it, the brat lashing out because she can, but without entirely hiding her discomfort — she swears in front of grown-ups but her voice cracks, she’s brash but not fearless. Meanwhile “Cannibal” is one of her boldest productions, though it’s spare: the electrothrob synth and tom-tom pitter-patter sustains it until the big laser-show chorus and bigger bridge, both of which she carries practically unaccompanied at first. As the production swells, you get the sense that she might not quite make it through this time, that this whole “Ke$ha” thing is just an accident, an unsustainable fluke — like, what the fuck is she even doing? But she does it, whatever it is, and it works for now.
[10]

Mallory O’Donnell: Betcha never thought you’d miss Princess Superstar.
[0]

Kat Stevens: During this year’s Ke$ha Discussion Frenzy I felt a bit like the emperor had got a new invisibility cape that I could see. I have read reams and reams of copy about how great she is but I just don’t get it. But then I didn’t like Gaga at first either: I found “Just Dance” so dull musically (and her visuals had yet to really make an impact) that I assumed she wasn’t worth bothering with — until I heard “Bad Romance”, of course. Ke$ha doesn’t care whether I’m bothering with her or not. She doesn’t have any little monsters or causes to fight for, which is fine — her job is being a popstar, after all. Except she doesn’t seem bothered with that either! Lazy drawling and Duplo block tunes, staggering around instead of dancing. There’s no hard graft or special talent or new ideas or challenged boundaries here. The raps on “Cannibal” are amusing but like so many drunken anecdotes I doubt they’ll be funny after the 4th hearing. I like rotting my mind with booze as much as the next girl but my eyes are still functioning enough to see a boring girl in a dull brown visible cape.
[2]

Alex Macpherson: Scrubbing the Autotune off her voice — in the verses, at least — is a good look. Until you realise that without it she’s just Fergie with a worse flow, puffing and panting down avenues already blitzed by Lady Gaga (“Monster”, right down to the call-and-response male voice) and Nicki Minaj (“Roman’s Revenge”, though Ke¢ha’s attempt to match it in menace and wit is embarrassing). A severely underwritten chorus — bellowing one phrase four times fails to disguise its lack of hook — provides whatever the opposite of a cherry on top is.
[2]

David Katz: Most bad music provokes a scramble for the stop button, but some, like this gem, just makes you grin.
[1]

Jer Fairall: Ke$ha is the most puzzling pop star of the new decade, mostly on account of there being absolutely no pretension to her image. Like Lady Gaga, she skipped right over the tween-courting phase of her career (even Madonna had this) and emerged fully formed as something a little bit scary and most definitely bad for you. The irony here may be that in being as vapid, tuneless and trashy as she is, Ke$ha might actually be the post-post-modern pop construct that the indeed very pretentious Lady Gaga continually purports to be; in other words, Ke$ha’s music is so consistently bad that there must be something genuinely subversive at work here of the sort that Lady Gaga cares far too much about her music to attempt. Hence, I’m puzzled, though not the least bit entertained, and after a year of Ke$ha I can’t even say I’m even disgusted enough by this latest deliberate provocation to slap this with a [0]. She’s already too boring to elicit true outrage.
[1]

Anthony Easton: KE$sha’s songs sound the same, but the sheer Eucharistic/sexualized consumption of this — enough to make Freud’s oral obsessions cower — add to her mystique. Extra points for a reference to Dahmer that dropped my jaw.
[9]

Jonathan Bogart: She can really sing she swears she can, but she won’t do anything so bourgeois respectable as to stop using AutoTune, she’ll sing through the machine until it nearly buckles under the strength of her voice. The oh-woah-oh-oh fugue is breathtaking as a nest of signifiers — a callback to “TiK ToK,” a cry of untrammeled passion, a slide into the actual madness which her cartoon-ghoul lyrics only wink at. All this and the Horror of the Feminine too; what do you call something that bleeds and bleeds and doesn’t die? If the patriarchy’s not dead, it’s not because Ke$ha didn’t sharpen her stake properly.
[10]

Chuck Eddy: Over-the-top Eurocheese conquers America: Jungle drums and voodoo rhythm, roars from the dungeon, howls like Tarzan Boy swinging through treetops (my wife hears Skinny Puppy! Though I doubt they ever sounded anywhere near this tuneful). Plus, Ke$ha’s second song with the word “carnivore,” and she only just started — take that, Ted Nugent! Not to mention Toto Coelo, the Buoys (“My stomach was full as it could be/And nobody ever got around/To finding Timothy”), and Alfred G. Packer. She eats cannibals, it’s incredible, we bring out the animal in her. Rrrraaggh!!
[9]

Katherine St Asaph: Ke$ha isn’t just a cannibal here, she is Cannibal, Archetype, rampaging through a track more wreckage than anything and stopping only to warp “Tik Tok”‘s chorus into a banshee cry. Banshees, of course, are explicitly female, and the gender coding is no mistake. “I am cannibal” begs to be completed with “hear me roar,” especially once she actually does. She reverses gender roles again like she did in “Blah Blah Blah” — he’s the one with the pittery-pattery heart and she’s got the hunger and (blood)lust; he’s a groupie hanger-on, he needs to hush and know his place. “Use your finger to stir my tea / and for dessert I’ll suck your teeth” is blatant innuendo, but innuendo devoid of anything mutual or reciprocal. She uses; his body parts get used. As Jonathan Bogart has noted, it’s a misogynist’s worst nightmare, their own kind of predatory sexuality wielded even by the fun party girls. That Ke$ha can spin this all out of “Imma eat you, fool” is why she’s worth watching.
[8]

Josh Langhoff: Here’s my current theory: her “party-girl” accent — all those “errrrrr”s and triphthongs and flattened Southern vowels — is less “Valley Girl” than “cobbled together to sound as little as possible like correct singing or speech”. That is, Ke$ha wants to give her transgression an immediacy that’s lacking in Katy or Avril, who still sound like they’re trying to Sing Songs, poor things, so she pronounces words in ways that no credible singer would let herself. Hence the second half of Verse 2, from “Use yer fingerrr tuh stirrr mah teeeeeah,” where she basically sounds like a twanging banjo (Nashville Scene voters take note). I admit that my examples from this song occur during raps — her singing here is just a playground for Auto-Tune fun — but the theory also applies to her singing on other songs, like “We R Who We R”; and anyway, I don’t get the sense that she differentiates between rapping and singing all that much. They’re different skills, sure, but it’s not like Rapping Ke$ha is a different character than Singing Ke$ha. But anyway, this all leads to my current and largely untested corollary hypothesis: Ke$ha writes her lyrics to play up the aforementioned vocal idiosyncrasies. Example: Katy’s “Teenage Dream” and “Firework” contain only a few “er” and “ar” syllables, whereas this song and “We R Who We R” contain a bunch.
[8]

Frank Kogan: Think that raw-voiced Ke$ha usually gets by on musical smarts more than technical ability. But on this one, her throat does the work, overdubbed into sheets of force and fire. I’m amazed.
[9]

Michaelangelo Matos: Her flipped-around moans during the bridge make her sound more like a landed dolphin than whatever kind of creature she thinks she’s imitating. That, or like the sickly cousin of Shakira’s she-wolf. It wouldn’t be the first time.
[3]

Alfred Soto: The first set of verses consist of Ke$ha’s usual not unpleasant string of talk-sing banalities. The chorus is too close to the boring clodhopping pulse of Robyn’s lamer electrodisco moments. The third part, when her vocoderized/pitch-altered voice goes up and down enough scales to frighten the hell out of Pavarotti, is monstrous in a good way. A shame Ke$ha hasn’t figured out how she wants to sound, which, I suppose, is a sign of her superficiality. I still believe the right collaborators could situate her voice in the appropriately abrasive sonic context. For now, though, hammer away.
[4]

Martin Skidmore: I’ve never had any taste for strained faux-outrageousness, so she mostly annoys me, and the “I eat boys for lunch” lyric here doesn’t change that. Sonically she’s kind of annoying too, shrill and strident — can she really be processed to deliberately sound like that? Anyway, I don’t like her and I don’t like this.
[2]

I’d like to pretend that it is in some way appropriate that our penultimate post for 2K10 is a song by the former keyboard player from Kid Creole and the Coconuts…

[Video][Myspace]
[7.62]

Martin Skidmore: Back after 27 years away, and sounding odd. Yes, it’s still Latino music and yes it’s sort of dancey, but it’s a weird track, Coati sounding sort of sinister over a twisted version of some sort of Latino dance and something like buzzing techno. Hard to sum up, but I can picture it soundtracking a Latin American Twin Peaks in my head. Excellent.
[8]

Alfred Soto: Welcome back, guys! Where’s the Kid?
[4]

Michaelangelo Matos: Wow: he made a track. Not a song, not a record; dance-fan lingo for something so purely intended for dancing and deejaying that whether you can sit and listen to it is sort of beside the point. The methodology is similar to the kind of 12-inches Coati Mundi was making with Kid Creole and Dr. Buzzard’s before (keep the arrangement moving and lively) even if the means are more modern: hard, bare rhythm track with various grinding oscillations acting as decoration, along with occasional woodwinds, voices, and FX. It’s a Latin-flavored dub, something I don’t believe I’ve heard nearly enough of.
[8]

Frank Kogan: Afro-Latino drumming, perhaps the most public music in the world, sounding here as if it were created in someone’s brainwaves and injected directly into the listener’s bloodstream, where it bubbles nervously. Gets under the skin, as they say.
[9]

Chuck Eddy: The rest of Dancing For The Cabana Code In The Land Of Boo-Hoo is a likeably goofy and half-finished kind of electro-salsa chant-dance music making occasional statements about dogs and debt and apple-polishers, but this very anomalous cut (also a 12-inch B-side) is… well, quite possibly as intense, energized, obsessive, and ominous, with as much red blood flowing through its veins as any “electronica” I’ve heard in the past two decades. I don’t catch all the words (guess I could look them up), but the music resides at the precise juncture of Dinosaur L’s “Corn Belt” (i.e., Arthur Russell when he was awesome not boring), Sven Vath in his weird old Teutonic 16 Bit/Off days, and probably some early Chicago acid-house by Phuture or Bam Bam — if those guys had all recorded in South America. I have no idea if that’s what the man a/k/a Andy “Sugar Coated” Hernandez was going for here, or if it’s mere coincidence (maybe he wrote it 25 years ago himself??); also have no idea if those sorts of oddball ’80s reference points would necessitate techno experts to dismiss this as “dated.” If so, they’re nuts, because from the era of such music, judging from everything I’ve heard since, techno has been in constant retreat. Until now, maybe.
[10]

Jonathan Bogart: James Bond meets dark disco with some half-hearted toasting. If it’s better than that sounds, there’s still an upper limit to how good that can get.
[6]

Anthony Easton: The best of Louis Prima’s Jungle Book, combined with the jungle drum setting of my childhood electronic keyboard and mashed up in a favela for all of yr Ibizia needs. Kind of awesome in a pan-global beatdown kind of way.
[8]

Mallory O’Donnell: Killer roots house from a dude whose roots run much deeper than house. Just the kind of thing I want to hear at peak time, when my senses are enflamed and my body is completely sublimated to a throbbing, slightly unforgiving beat. What’s unexpected is how precise and modern it all sounds, excepting perhaps a certain amount of hard-house malingering between 3:15 and 3:45. Still, if this dude was 18, we’d probably all be giving it a [9].
[8]

And yes, we realise this technically isn’t a week anymore…

[Video][Website]
[7.56]

Alex Ostroff: Ciara is absolutely brilliant at exactly three things: 1) breathy slow jams with Minneapolis Sound drums and a heavy Princefluence; 2) bass-heavy hyperkinetic club bangers with ample opportunity to show off ridiculous dance moves; 3) songs that sound like “Oh“. “Gimmie Dat” falls into the second category, and it might be the best of its kind. The chorus is all overload — heavy bass, wailing synths and sirens, random background yelps. The verses, on the other hand, are exercises in austerity — CiCi and a beat, abruptly jumping octaves. By the second verse, she’s harmonizing with herself and copping moves from freestyle. It might all sound a little insubstantial on headphones, but in its natural (read: club) environment it destroys.
[9]

Michaelangelo Matos: The R&B-goes-techno juggernaut yielded many more manifest pleasures (to my ears) than this one in 2010, but I do enjoy it some, particularly the bridge (who will be the first R&B diva to go donk, anyway?).
[5]

David Katz: I got burned for comparing this to M.I.A. (earlier stuff, I promise) on a forum but I won’t shelve that comparison just yet, because it somehow explains to these lapsed rockist ears why I love this song so much. Doesn’t the “this right here’s a banger” verse, with its percussion an aural beckoning to the dancefloor, call back that seismic party anthem “Bucky Done Gun”? And how about those offbeat shouts and squawks, or the melodic centre the song seems to unveil and then cover under its cloak?
[10]

Alfred Soto: The Evolution boasted a bass track this bootylicious called “I Proceed,” for which Ciara contributed her usual diffident vocal. This is friskier, but still doesn’t sound as unhinged as a single might — another solid album track.
[6]

Mallory O’Donnell: A semi-charming bubble-bass techno jam completely wasted on Ciara. Except for the part starting at 2:39 that sounds like a juice commercial. That part she’s perfect for.
[4]

Martin Skidmore: I can’t understand why we ignored this at the time, since she is a big favourite of a few people here, me included. This is an energetic dance number produced by Tricky Stewart, with Ciara repeating “gimmie dat bass” a lot over hyper beats and buzzing synths and lots of background vocal interjections. Her voice is never powerful, but the sexiness of her breathy tones works well with this, and I’m surprised it failed to be a big hit.
[9]

Chuck Eddy: Aloof R&B, devoid of personality but not energy, with gurgling beats beneath that Ciara rides competently — but not sexily, no matter how much she seems convinced otherwise. The yelps in the background, the stop-and-start parts, the “bass!” interjections, and the electronic fuzz-blurts all add… something. I guess. At times, they suggest what I used to like about house music, when it was new. All they need now is a singer. And song.
[5]

Anthony Easton: Tightly controlled, and tightly wound, with a flow that contains so much information and so much noise simultaneously. It sounds manic, but it isn’t, and it sounds frenzied, but it isn’t — both of those expressions suggest that nothing is on purpose, and that she is on the verge of losing control, but she has more control, more ability to construct meaning in such limited space; the ruthless efficiency of this track is so abrasive and so beautiful.
[8]

Katherine St Asaph: It’s hard to tell which part of “Gimmie Dat” is the most electrifying. There’s the triple-time rap punctuated by shrieks, sirens, and whatever else spontaneously erupts from being near Ciara and, in the video, her choreography; the seething “I’ve been gone for so long” sections that clamp a lid over this energy precisely when you don’t expect it, and the part in the bridge where it’s like Ciara figured out how to literally make love to a bass line. There’s nothing on the charts a tenth this kinetic; the world’s that much more sluggish for it.
[9]

Al Shipley: The-Dream and Tricky Stewart are so inextricably linked most of the time that it’s refreshing now and then to hear a track powered by the latter’s inventive and propulsive percussion but not tied down by the former’s narrow and all too familiar lyrical and melodic palette. Kinetic dance tracks have always been an essential part of the Ciara sound but not necessarily the source of her biggest or best hits. This, however, feels like a big ballsy cumulation of them all.
[9]

Alex Macpherson: I underrated “Ride” back in May — it’s since become a legit song-of-the-year contender — but there’s no danger of that here. “Gimmie Dat” is more of a workout than a pop song, an elastic 50,000bpm club banger perfectly designed for the Ciara’s gymnastic abilities — in voice and body (in probably the most jaw-dropping, how-does-she-do-that video of the year), both marked by a blend of quicksilver suppleness and military precision. There is no greater dancer in pop right now. Afropop chants and an unexpectedly sweet middle eight provide perfectly judged ornamentation — elements that ensure “Gimmie Dat” isn’t just pure function, but that don’t distract from its focus. The latter is expanded on the stunningly pretty Urban Bass remix, which comes across as a deeply felt love letter to street dance — by now, it’s clear that this is not just where Ciara’s roots are, but her heart as well.
[10]

Zach Lyon: It’s really hard to disagree with anything Ciara or Tricky Stewart are proposing here. It can drag a little for a song this frenetic, but it takes enough left-field turns to make up for it. From the 2:30 mark on, it’s just nutty. Sexy bass, too.
[8]

Kat Stevens: Ciara is a rarity amongst female pop/RnB singers in that she seems to prefer wearing trousers to dresses (or police tape or whatever). Is this because it is easier to dance incredibly well in jeans? Is it because she has extremely long legs and dresses look weird on her (i.e. the opposite of Taylor Swift)? Perhaps it’s because jeans are more likely to have pockets, in which one may stash one’s goodies Oyster card whilst grinding away to a backing track made out of Skype conversations between dolphins and bats? Or because you are less likely to get your lobster cape trapped in the car door if you are not wearing one? I can empathise and agree with all these reasons. However I absolutely cannot accept the lyric “I’m making love to the bassline” in ANY WAY SHAPE OR FORM.
[7]

Jer Fairall: So much here is good that I wish the whole thing were better than it is. Her voice is serviceable yet thin, reminding me a lot of Janet Jackson (‘specially during those bubbly “na na na”s) and not nearly commanding enough to match those urgent, sputtering beats. In the end, though, it’s still too busy to really be effective, like they didn’t have sufficient confidence in what they had and kept throwing sound upon sound at a would-be fantastic minimalist dance track until it resembled nothing that might potentially alienate anyone.
[6]

Jordan Sargent: Above all of the reasons why “Gimmie Dat” succeeds so effortlessly -— that it’s a dancefloor burner that eschews pop’s current obsession with Euro house; that it recalls, and even improves upon, the glorious first run of Ciara singles -— it’s the sheer number of hooks packed into the song that elevates it into the upper echelon of not only Cici’s discography, but contemporary pop music as a whole. They come quickly and relentlessly: there’s the song’s central jackhammering chorus, there’s the unexpectedly slowed down bridge that allows Ciara to weave in her nearly unmatched knack for breathy, swooning ballads, there’s the flirtatious refrain, and I believe that even the pre-chorus has a pre-chorus. So while some might argue that Basic Instinct ended up as a slight album that didn’t deliver on the promise of its brilliant singles, “Gimme Dat” offers an album’s worth of satisfaction in just over four minutes.
[9]

Jonathan Bogart: She comes hard, but the beat comes even harder, and I’m not sure it doesn’t overwhelm her. Have to bang it several hundred more times to make sure.
[7]

Not as hairy as they used to be, are they?…

[Video][Website]
[7.60]

Alfred Soto: AKA “Suite: Juanita Brown Eyes.”
[4]

David Moore: Didn’t know what to expect with this one, but a CSNY-sampling singalong wasn’t it — I’m drawn in by the Marc Anthony hook and inventive use of the sample, but the rapping seems like filler between choruses. And because of that, it seems like kind of a one-trick pony, though not a bad one — Nicki Minaj’s “Your Love” has a similar effect, and this is at least as good.
[7]

Al Shipley: There may be no better way to celebrate Latin pride than to demonstrate how different 3 Latin crossover acts can be and still find common ground on a great summer jam. The CSN sample may not exactly stay within the theme, but it’s hard to deny how perfect the hook works.
[8]

Jonathan Bogart: One of the mixes I daydreamed about making this year was a historical overview of Cuban music, from wax cylinders to modern mp3s, to which this would have been the capstone, the final (for now) word. Not just because it takes a familiar lick and melody from Stephen Stills’ attempt at replicating Latin music, folding it back in on itself to become the real thing all these years later; not just because Sen Dog namechecks mambo legend Beny Moré in his homestretch verse; not even because Pitbull is the latest in a long line of great Cuban-American showmen to grab America by its scruff and shake it for change. Well, all of that; but also because it’s a great celebration of Cubanismo — particularly Cubanismo in exile, or Cubanamericanismo — even insisting on the racial pride of descent from the extinct Taino tribe. Even the fact that Marc Anthony’s Puerto Rican plays into it: Cubanismo is much bigger than Cuba these days. Even a European mutt like me can holler along, as I’ve been doing four or five times a week for nine months straight. Slap me some DOMINOS.
[10]

Chuck Eddy: Wow, the best part of “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes” (I think?) via “Guantanamera” (I think?) as Latin bugalu rap — probably the most polyrhythmic in its style I’ve come across since the long-gone mid ’90s of “Tres Delinquentes” by Delinquent Habits and “Tequila” by A.L.T. and the Lost Civilization. Plus: Letters to Castro! Not to mention the best Cypress Hill track (yep, “Insane In The Brain” included) I’ve heard since their debut album, not that I’ve been keeping very close tabs, admittedly. And Pitbull — maybe because he finally just put out his first album specifically marketed to the Latin audience, which just happens to have “Guantanamera” on it –seems to be leaning more blatantly salsa these days, or at least that’s my uninformed theory, judging from parts of recent songs I accidentally bump into on the car radio. Good for him. So am I allowed to hope that this means reggaeton’s over now? Also, can somebody please rap over Joe Cuba next? Anyway, if this had come out earlier in the year, it might have had a shot at my P&J singles ballot; as is, I’m a little concerned it might fade somewhat over the long haul, but I’ll stick my neck out numerically here regardless.
[9]

Edward Okulicz: A glorious sticky hot-weather collage. The backing vocals don’t so much signify summer as take you there and the beats drip appropriately with sweat. The sample is well-chosen and judiciously employed — instantly familiar, but perfect in its new context. Cypress Hill themselves sound more anonymous than I remember but it makes it easier to forget about “Hits From The Bong”, which I always hated. My favourite single of theirs was always “Tequila Sunrise” anyway. My second? Probably this, now.
[8]

Martin Skidmore: A very Latino track from a group that has made astonishingly little impact on me given their size and that I love hip hop. This rolls along appealingly enough, but it feels awkward a lot of the time, as if they haven’t integrated the different parts at all well. Pitbull works best on higher energy tracks, and in the end this does nothing much for me.
[5]

Michaelangelo Matos: Pitbull contributes not much. Marc Anthony owns the hook; finally, my sister Brittany, who’s been hounding me about Anthony for years, has got me nailed. Cypress Hill I never thought I’d care even a little bit about again, but that’s pop for you. Anyway, the details mean nothing; it’s the whole that matters. Which is to say that this pushes all my old-guy buttons at once: classic rock, early ’90s rap, ’70s low-rider funk. Most unexpected of all is the fact that the track’s MVP is none other than Crosby, Stills & Nash, whom I have never enjoyed until now.
[8]

Zach Lyon: It’s already an impressive feat that the formula of (Latinized CSN sample + Marc Anthony + Pitbull + oh yeah, also Cypress Hill) doesn’t hinge entirely on the quality of Pitbull’s verse. It’s almost creepy how well this all merges together into the same, undoubtedly well-constructed track, like someone dared Jim Jonsin to make it work and he rose to the occasion (though I admit, I keep rewinding after the Pitbull verse because it is pretty great).
[9]

Jordan Sargent: While Cypress Hill and Marc Anthony haven’t been relevant (to American pop charts at least, in the case of the latter) since the late-90s, Pitbull and Jim Jonsin, their two collaborators on “Armada Latina,” are both in the phases of their careers where overexposure has led to diminishing artistic returns. Thankfully though, no one here has decided to chase trends in the hopes of scoring an unexpected top 10 hit. Instead, the song seems borne out of a desire to entertain creative impulses and whimsy that one would associate with artists that have no delusions of grand pop success. But more importantly, the song plays to the strengths of everyone here. Cypress Hill get to do laid back, playful verses that are befitting of rap veterans. Marc Anthony, singing Spanish adult contemporary, is deployed tastefully. Pitbull, taking time off from his day job as Euro house guest rapper du jour, is back in his comfort zone as Latin America’s crossover star. And Jim Jonsin does his best J.R. Rotem impression in turning a hackish sample into a beat that is almost transcendent. I didn’t hear this on the radio enough this summer.
[8]

This lot are so under the radar that they’ve apparently split already…

[Video][Website]
[5.00]

Michaelangelo Matos: James Taylor meets rockers uptown.
[3]

Iain Mew: Soundwise this was largely pre-empted by Faultline ft. Chris Martin 8 years ago, but it’s sooo well done that it stands out as my favourite song by a new act in years. Already a thing of gorgeous and mysterious longing from Samuel’s vocals and the soft synth pulses washing over, the way that he’s periodically beset with mechanical whirring and electronic sawing lends a whole new shade of haunting desperation. The tension that’s built for the the seconds of silence in the middle is incredible, emptiness stretching out and out until it finally ends with the emergence of a beat which now sounds thunderous.
[9]

Martin Skidmore: An odd and intriguing sound, kind of like minimalist trip hop, white soul singing over odd buzzes and clicks and occasional synth chords. I guess it stands or falls on how much you engage with the vocal, and while I started out feeling almost captivated, I lost interest soon when it went nowhere.
[5]

Chuck Eddy: One point for the synthesizer (the only thing giving this any life at all, and it doesn’t give much), zero for the singer. Who is unbearable.
[1]

Mallory O’Donnell: I’ll admit that I don’t really understand the whole post-Dave Matthews thing. But I’ll be damned if I let it infect my precious synthpop. Synthpop dudes are either properly gay or far more interested in cocaine and, like, art than college girls. Those are the rules. They are never trying to get laid so clearly as this douche. And they certainly never sound like they’d be caught in the bare naked light of dawn with an acoustic guitar (or a drum machine) and a song they just wrote… about you. Makes Hurts sound positively butch.
[2]

Alex Macpherson: Creaky like a door in an abandoned house swinging open, the diamonds of this song seem not luxurious, but as ancient as their carbon history. I prefer 8Bitch’s remix, which magnifies the song’s odd floating-in-space qualities and turns the backing into something both prettier and more disquieting.
[6]

Anthony Easton: Beautiful is one of those words where, if you have to say it, then it most likely does not exist. Though this is supposed to be eerie, evocative, maybe a bit melancholic, its buzzing and crooning leads towards a kind of obsessive and narcissistic obsession with his own skills as a seducer.
[3]

Katherine St Asaph: You meet someone, and she is beautiful. There are a few ways to proceed. You could approach her. You could bound off, clanging and clattering toward the street where she lives. Or you could crawl back home late to stare at screens, the hard drive ticking in the background as you try to find her face among the pixels. Maybe she’ll call, but probably not; you can see when she’s online, which she isn’t, nor might she be. Maybe you’ll call, but probably not; besides, it’s quiet enough in the room to murmur what you might have said. It’ll be too long, too unwieldy. You’ll talk too much about beauty and lies and won’t even keep straight who’s got the phone when. Eventually you’ll catch on some phrase like “this is the diamond of the dark,” get too loud for the room and recoil. You can lose entire days this way, but you know why you do it. If you keep still long enough, something might find you.
[8]

Jer Fairall: The grind of the film projector, a trick already deployed throughout Gnarls Barkley’s St. Elsewhere, creates the lonely feeling of some obtuse foreign art film unreeling at a near-empty, crumbling cinema, quite the opposite of Cee-Lo and Danger Mouse’s Technicolor fantasias. Works for a while as a mood piece, but as a song it’s disappointingly anti-climatic, the barely elevated pulse that follows the moment of mid-song silence the sonic embodiment of that old Oscar-Brotman-by-way-of-Roger-Ebert rule: “If nothing has happened by the end of the first reel… nothing is going to happen.”
[5]

Zach Lyon: Just eccentric enough to skate by entirely on eccentricity.
[7]

Jonathan Bogart: A triumph of production over song; I could lose myself for hours in the soundscape, but for the pesky people moaning over it.
[6]

Usually, when Spanish bands have interesting names, they end up sounding like Wet Wet Wet. Not this lot…

[Video][Myspace]
[6.70]

Alex Macpherson: So they have bog-standard indie in Spain too, huh. What on earth is meant to be this song’s selling point? Even when concentrating on concentrating I drift away within the minute.
[3]

Jonathan Bogart: I’m not even sure what my buttons are anymore, but holy fuck does this push them.
[8]

Andrew Casillas: THIS SONG IS SO LOUD AND AWESOME I CAN’T TURN OFF MY CAPS LOCK
[8]

Iain Mew: Maybe it’s just because I’ve been listening to Javiera Mena a lot since we covered her and this is the only other Spanish language thing I’ve heard since, but the charmingly indie vocals and playful mood of this really reminds me of her. Only put through a filter of layers and layers of bludgeoning noise, which acts to highlight the prettiness of the song underneath almost as well as actually bringing it to the fore would.
[8]

Martin Skidmore: Well, I like her voice, and there is some fine almost Wedding Presenty strumming on this, but overall it sounds like the kind of indie that made me lose interest in the genre a couple of decades back, and a couple of likeable elements don’t really change that.
[4]

Anthony Easton: Corn syrup over a statue of Horus, naked chicks with skulls covering genitalia, random shots of goats, and a blasphemous host — sort of like the Eluard maxim about nuns and becoming a priest, but incredibly fond of the grindy/noisy guitars, the stupid easy percussion, and the sweet love of kitsch.
[9]

Chuck Eddy: Moderately loud, moderately pretty zillionth-generation post-JAMC indie-nerd barrage with a vaguely sweet-sounding frontgirl and no audible rhythm section. Sung in a language that perhaps makes it interesting in theory, but it’s less so in reality — a shame, since the opening notes sounding like “Ca Plane Pour Moi” got my hopes up.
[5]

Michaelangelo Matos: At long last, the Jukebox gets its hands on a good old-fashioned Velvet Underground rip. This one is from Spain, and like most good, straight-ahead sons and daughters of “What Goes On,” it gains power with repetition. Well, OK, it’s not just that: the band slows down and speeds up more easily and readily than the Velvets ever did when the song calls for it. But they piledrive really well anyway.
[7]

Jer Fairall: Culturally myopic of me as it may be, I tend to get annoyed when I have not even a chance of understanding lyrics, but the words here seem to be less the point than the layers of happy noise, anyway. Also, the singer seems to be, at enough points throughout, singing things that I imagine would be gibberish to me even if the song were in English, so I just shut up and get as lost in this blissful, propulsive blur as I would if this were something by MBV or Ride or anyone like that.
[8]

Mallory O’Donnell: Given my proclivities, it’s only natural that I like this — vocals en español, post-punk-ish female singer, uhh… named after a freaking New Order song. But while the melodic line is very New Order, the production is brittle and lo-fi, more like shoegaze or old school punk than anything on Factory. It’s a combination that works — and is going to sound totally sweet at that hottest basement dance party ever you never realized you were gonna be throwing until right before you heard this.
[7]

And now – BEARDS!…

[Video][Myspace]
[7.00]

Martin Skidmore: This is a strange one: dubby dancehally vocals over some sort of broken experimental techno, that aspect possibly down to good old Autechre (I hadn’t known they were still going). It’s kind of an uncomfortable listen, disturbing even, jagged and uneasy, and I like it a lot.
[8]

Michaelangelo Matos: I never would have believed who this remix was by if I hadn’t already known. Having never listened to Autechre much at all, I wasn’t prepared for so much coiled menace in so few bytes, so much information conveyed with so little information. Because it’s so bare, it is tempting to play it very fucking loudly. I haven’t suffered a concussion yet. Give it a year.
[10]

Anthony Easton: Percussive science fiction, isolating, and like hearing something in the hold of a ship that you have no idea where it is nor where it is going — genuinely frightening.
[8]

Chuck Eddy: Musique Conrete dub noise, in the tradition of countless mid ’80s Adrian Sherwood productions or late ’90s releases on Broklyn Beats Records, both of which I supported somewhat vocally in their respective days — something I suspect Kevin Martin and I have in common. Definitely also enjoyed an early Bug CD or two in the background for a week or two once upon a time, before I got rid of them; Curse of the Golden Vampire, too. And pretty sure I still have something by Techno Animal around here somewhere. So this sounds fine to me — oddly reassuring and nostalgic, even. Just not quite sure how it might be distinctive. More glitch, less metal, maybe? Not that I really believe that. And anyway, the effect’s the same.
[7]

Alex Macpherson: Desiccated take on an incredible original; doom without drama proves merely dull.
[3]

David Katz: Autechre surgically extract the skanking funk of the original, replacing it with bones of steel. Terminator-chic doesn’t become you, Killa P & Flowdan.
[5]

Jonathan Bogart: Okay, I assume that (almost) everything I love about this is Autechre, but it makes me want to start diving around in dancehall just in case there’s anything else at all like this out there.
[8]

And we’re BACK! With GOSPEL!…

[Video][Website]
[5.83]

Katherine St Asaph: I guess it was only a matter of time before we got a Christian substitute for T-Pain. Earns more points than the previous sentence would suggest for the ending, where the autotune warps itself into something that really does sound, well, fresh.
[5]

Jer Fairall: What would Jesus Auto-Tune?
[1]

Jonathan Bogart: Well, no, I haven’t been listening closely to modern gospel lately. But surely it doesn’t all sound like this — it’s hard for me to associate it with the floral prints and Dockers that make up the uniform of modern Christianity.
[7]

Anthony Easton: My friend Pat: “That is the heaviest auto-tune I have ever heard, and I’ve heard Ke$ha and Jimmy Fallon parodying auto-tune.”
[3]

Martin Skidmore: I assume as a former top gospel singer, he can sing, so presumably the very heavy use of autotune is a repositioning move – I guess the title and lyric about wanting to move forward is that too. I find the extremely robotic sound as unlistenable as I did in the ’70s, and the funky music isn’t a lot more modern than that.
[3]

Josh Langhoff: The parts of “Fresh” that make it gospel — addressing God, quoting the Bible — feel like afterthoughts; this is really a song about Tye discovering the joys of Auto-Tune, or whatever voice-manipulator he used (apparently you can use it “straight out the box”!) He seems blissfully unaware that secular R&B has been doing the same thing for many years now, and that blatant Auto-Tune isn’t even unheard of in Christian circles — Marvin Sapp, a more traditional gospel singer, used it on a couple songs earlier this year, and the icky tobyMac has had a big A-T hit. So CCM’s lagging behind secular music again, what else is new? But apart from the synth-arpeggios and strutting beat and chord changes, all great, I love this song because Tye uses his new toy with such unbridled enthusiasm, mutating his voice in a variety of ways I don’t think I’ve heard outside Ke$ha. During the choruses he sounds like a whole P-Funk army. And if it weren’t for their chronology, Tye’s coda could be a minimalist riposte to Kanye’s overwrought Vocoder solo.
[9]

Chuck Eddy: I often wonder whether current urban gospel might be doing something I’d love in R&B terms that current R&B (at least the mainstream hit kind) rarely pulls off anymore, and then I never get around to checking to find out. But unless this is an absolute anomaly (possible — couldn’t make it through the album), the ain’t-no-stopping-us-now optimism and extremely convincing early-to- mid ’80s electro-funk approximations (synth-wise, singing-wise, melody-wise, old-school graffiti throwup on CD-cover-wise) here suggest my theory just might be right. Fresh in more ways than one.
[8]

Michaelangelo Matos: I like the way he goes for it vocally. Those filliping little “yeah!”s on the way out of the chorus and back to the verse make him sound like a cartoon, even more than the insane amount of vocal processing. When all the singing converges there’s a disorienting glossolalic effect that recalls a dozen things but doesn’t quite sound like any of them.
[7]

Mallory O’Donnell: So this is pretty seriously optimistic, and that’s a trait associated with gospel, in both traditional and pop spheres. But it’s also wildly prevalent in those underground and regional disco, funk and electro oddities (Jefferson Ink, Videeo and X-25 Band come to mind here in Houston) that appeared at random points during the 80’s to no initial fanfare but serious posthumous eBay cachet, all performed by musicians who probably knew the gospel artists in town as well as they knew the funk and electro &c ones. Which is to say, intimately. Which is really just how it should be, since we’re all so beyond such considerations as genre now, right? There’s still the bit here about Lord, and God, and new starts and all, and that’s certainly not something I remember a lot from 80’s vocoder-driven electro-funk jams. But then I don’t remember the kick-ass a cappella fade being this distinctly kick-ass a fade before, either. Hey, “out with the old, in with the new.”
[7]

David Moore: My only other experience with Tye Tribbett is a live track of “Victory” I stuck on a mix based on suggestions from kids in a summer program — I belatedly noticed an interlude in which Tye, without a trace of irony, yells, “God says to come out! Come out of depression! Come out of poverty! Come out of homosexuality! Come out of lesbianism!” That was standard pop-gospel, but like Mary Mary’s “God in Me” I’m surprised, given what I do know of his music, by how seamlessly “Fresh” might fit into a secular pop playlist. Except there’s something a little alien about how Tye slathers the Autotune on here — it’s somewhere between disguise-as-personality (a la T-Pain) and total facelessness, a conscious attempt to destroy a strong voice rather than support a weak one. The rationale seems to be that Autotune signifies “cool” to The Kids and therefore should be used amply to spruce up an otherwise bland message about God giving him a makeover. There’s a one-minute coda that’s about as weird as Kanye’s outro to “Runaway,” and I can imagine Tye subconsciously daring will.i.am to steal it so that everyone is crystal clear that this song could also be about clothes.
[5]

Zach Lyon: Drenching a song in this much autotune (to the point of at times being indecipherable) only works when the track’s content is equally superficial or inorganic or… forced? And Tye brings it all. His enthusiasm over fresh is more than a little creepy and sad, to a point where you’re only left considering what he’s leaving behind rather than where he’s going. The full-on-android coda understandably follows his apparent fainting spell from the heat of exhaustion. It works.
[8]

Frank Kogan: Despite what the words claim, this is basically an Autotuned up combination of the soul and the electro side of disco. But it sure brings a smile to my face, as if the guy just found these sounds, thinks they inherently sparkle – which they do here. I also get a kick out of gospel fans having a cow on comment threads. Not everyone wants a God of surprise, I guess.
[7]

We don’t review much Irish pop. I blame Pat Shortt…

[Video][Myspace]
[7.27]

Anthony Easton: Beautiful voice, but twee as hell. Sort of like a less interesting She and Him, plus She and Him really are the only ones that can get away with this kind of thing.
[6]

Frank Kogan: Two styles I hate — indie little girl spooky fairytale singing and indie retropop — all in one. And by a minute-and-a-half in I’m taken by this anyway; first, the background voice, in this strangely reduced arrangement, suggesting the vast reaches of a Spector production; and then bells and echoes, more Spector techniques, a small voice surveying a giant landscape, a minimalist tower of sound, if that makes sense.
[8]

Katie Lewis: Normally a voice of this timbre would drive me insane if I had to listen to it for more than 3 seconds, but this song is just so damn bewilderingly cute, I can’t hate.
[7]

Katherine St Asaph: That the world has imported Villagers from Ireland and still not Cathy Davey — guy was even in her band, for chrissakes — remains a travesty. “Little Red” is the lead single off her third album, The Nameless, where she throws herself into sea shanties, death ballads, cabaret and in this case, Motown. Cathy pulls it off stunningly, but out of context it might seem like a Duffy/Pipettes do-over, looting whichever old genre is trendy for resale. If she was out to chase trends, though, she’s had over eight years, including the one where her first promos started a record-company bidding war and the one where she got a Meteor nom. She’s been nothing but respectful about her influences, and there’s no trace of irony or cutesiness. Then you might notice that the lyrics at first read weirdly reactionary, the song equivalent of a Charlotte Yonge novel: girls, don’t let him in, never mind leave the house! But “Little Red,” on The Nameless, comes after two songs reveling in letting suitors in (“In He Comes” then “Habit,” for the curious), both equally passionate. The album’s a response to grief, and one of the axes is letting everyone in versus shutting everyone out. Both responses come with danger and fear, and at the heart of “Little Red,” as Cathy’s stated, is the gripping fear people let themselves feel. The genius is how she inhabits this fear — she’s one of the best interpreters of songs I’ve heard — to exorcise it until there’s nothing left in its form but joy.
[9]

Edward Okulicz: How adorable! I hadn’t heard a single song of hers since Something Ilk seven years ago because that album made me sure she’d never again have another song as good as “Clean And Neat”. And yet, here we are, with wee Cathy having taken Camera Obscura’s bag of tricks and ratcheted up the twee to near-unbearable levels and comprehensively proving me wrong. Note: near-unbearable. And such commitment to the material too: she sweeps across every line with conviction, like she’s a dramatic heroine. It’s pretty gorgeous.
[8]

Jessica Popper: Cathy Davey was one of many amnesty artists who I had never heard of before, but she’s quickly become one of my favourite recent discoveries. She’s clearly an indie girl but there’s still enough panache put into the song to keep my pop-loving ears happy. The video is excellent too. Cathy reminds me of mid-00s singers like Butterfly Boucher and Nathalie Nordnes, neither of whom I’ve heard much of lately so it’s great to know their mini-genre won’t die out quite yet.
[8]

Zach Lyon: Maybe not an obvious single, but a nice little song anyway — some of the most rewarding replayability out of any of these amnesty tracks, somehow. It might be foolish to try to pin the lyrics down without knowing the precise intent; there’s a lot to be said, but as far as I can come up with, I can only offer a bunch of tags like “male paranoia culture” or “victim-blaming mentality” or somesuch. Sonically, it’s so rough, and the layers of orchestration and bells and drums all sound so mono that it’s easy to forget the song isn’t just a girl and her acoustic guitar. It’s all beautifully constructed though, down to that slapped timpani in the chorus.
[8]

Michaelangelo Matos: Skiffle is back!
[5]

Martin Skidmore: Her voice is thin, but in a cutely endearing way, fitting with the rather low-budget feel of the music, which chugs along with some amateurish backing vocals, probably also by Cathy I think. It clicks into a fairly strong song at times, and I rather like it.
[7]

Jonathan Bogart: Jauntiness is an underappreciated tool in the pop (folk-pop division) kit, but pairing it with an edge of menace and strong singing in a distinctive voice is the way to my heart.
[8]

Alex Macpherson: Threatens tweeness, saved by a surprisingly muscular groove and a voice just on the acceptable side of little-girlish.
[6]

And it’s another one for the stick…

[Video][Website]
[4.58]

Anthony Easton: Newsom continues with her whole quirky for the sake of being quirky femme chick vibe, this time attached to a ladies of the canyon kind of low key vibe, but the lyrics are new age twaddle, her voice is the helium bunny gone weird, and the production is filled to the gills with sheer pretension. Can she go away soon?
[0]

Edward Okulicz: Her voice is still a startlingly dreadful instrument that signifies difficulty for its own sake and its worst crime is it doesn’t even render the lyrics unintelligible.
[1]

Chuck Eddy: Could possibly tolerate her ridiculous art-song vocal stylings if she had, I dunno, a band like Sparks in 1972 backing her up, or some 1979 Lene Lovich new wave beats. But this off-kilter piano-folk wheeze just doesn’t cut it, certainly not for seven minutes. Jazzy stuff near the end did add a point, though.
[3]

Michaelangelo Matos: The wayward theme to a forgettable ’70s road movie, from right at the point when the entire concept of the “’70s road movie” was hitting the dirt.
[1]

Alfred Soto: Best appreciated as a compendium of feminine vocal mannerisms of the last thirty years: Laura Nyro’s hyper-arch trill, Joni Mitchell’s self-deprecating doubling-back upon a lyric, to Kate Bush’s multi-tracked accretion of complexity; all that’s missing is Joan Armatrading’s hortatory bellowing. And I do miss it. The organ washes and brass section remain too damn subtle for my taste. Good intentions, good company.
[6]

David Katz: Ys was a shocking, startling album and its burst of verbosity and dense orchestration grabbed listeners by the collar and didn’t let go. You were either dazzled, intrigued or in some cases discomforted by it. Point being, for music fans of a certain stripe, it commanded this attention in a way not many single albums can do. And so three years later, along comes Have One On Me, which considerably strips away the eccentricity, and accordingly, most of the garish personality of her past work. Good Intentions Paving Company exemplifies the album’s pared-back stance: an early 70s classic rock song that Joni Mitchell could have penned in her sleep. Once you’ve hired the orchestra, Van Dyke Parks and Jim O’Rourke, not even triple-LPs can curb the downward slide after the peak.
[5]

Alex Macpherson: The closest thing to a pop song on Have Oneu On Me – I still feel inordinately virtuous at having sat through all three CDs of it. It’s easy to pinpoint Newsom’s fortes: her instinct for how words sound, for instance. “Like a bump on a bump on a log, baby / Like I’m in a fistfight with the fog, baby / Step, ball-change and a pirouette / And I regret, I regret!” goes the song’s most enjoyable verse, and it’s both evocative of the narrator’s confusion and Newsom’s own love of language. The vocal nodes that forced her to abandon her more grating mannerisms are welcome, too: she’s no less creative a vocalist now, and much more listenable. But as admirable though this is,it’s also unlovable: you come away impressed at the depth and breadth of Joanna Newsom’s talent, but without much desire to go back for more.
[6]

Alex Ostroff: Good Intentions Paving Company is nothing if not generous. As with any number of songs by Newsom, there is a surfeit of details to explore. There’s the way that her description of a road trip doubles as metaphor for the relationship that sours as the road gets rough. Joanna may protest that she can drive, even if her heart can’t, but by song’s end, they both struggle to stay in the right lane. Or the way that both stories dovetail with the gradual musical shift from rolling pianos to tinges of bluegrass (carried over from the lovely stop-gap Ys Street Band EP) and finally the well-earned wordless coda. But none of those are why ‘Good Intentions’ is the song that forced me to finally pay attention to one of my now-favourite artists. This is: her voice. Joanna’s voice, so often decried as twee or precious, rebuts every critique thrown at her. Expressive and varied, she effortlessly runs the emotional gamut from apprehensive to excited to wistful, sometimes all at once. Listen to the way she wraps herself around the word ‘duration.’ Every layer of this has contours to delve into – Joanna twists and winds her way around the instruments, around your ears and your brain and your heart. At seven minutes in length, I’ve probably spent a couple of hours of my life in 2010 listening to this, and I pick up on more nuances every single time.
[10]

Zach Lyon: I like this a lot as a logical extension of her career. If Joanna Newsom is going to exist, it’s probably best that she starts to veer towards this hefty Joni revivalism. It’s a coat that fits her almost surprisingly well. And you have to go from twee to somewhere.
[8]

Jer Fairall: I’m willing to concede that what she’s doing is either over my head or just something I lack the patience to decode, but it doesn’t stop me from wanting to hear, in her, the warmth and good humour that I get from Owen Pallett, the beatific humanism that I hear radiating from Regina Spektor, or the acknowledgement to pop form that Bjork, even at her most eccentric, rarely lets wane. This is actually less of a chore to get through than other things I’ve heard by her, not at all unpleasant, really, but still wooly and aimless and precious as all hell.
[4]

Jonathan Bogart: Jackson Browne just got the weirdest boner.
[8]

Martin Skidmore: The title is very good, and she is trying all sorts of different things here, swinging between styles and genres, not so set on the harp and all that, but her mannered singing tends to annoy me and I somehow end up unable to absorb the lyric at all, perhaps too distracted by the vocal gimmickry. Not for me.
[3]