Without Martin Skidmore, this website wouldn’t be around today.

Martin joined the Jukebox in the Stylus days, back at the start of 2006. I think we were in a pub at the time. I remember why I invited him – I’d never read any formal music writing by him aside from his contributions to ILX, but he had a huge knowledge of music, especially old soul and R&B, and loved talking to people about it. We’d been friends since about 2003, I think, when I first started going to gatherings of London ILX posters. He was always warm and welcoming, always willing to sit and chat and listen about any old thing.

Once he joined the Jukebox, he became the heartbeat of the place. From the start of 2006 up til a few weeks ago, he blurbed pretty much every single song we reviewed (there may be the occasional exception, my administration of this place was that haphazard that it’s impossible to check). I never asked him to, but every week he’d sit, listen and send his thoughts. Anyone who’s followed us for any length of time will know that my enthusiasm wavers, a lot. Martin’s never did.

He was always quite critical of his writing style; he often used to say he didn’t mind me cutting his stuff, that he would understand if I wanted to let him go. I would always reply that he’d be the last person I’d do that to; he’d given us so much, and I couldn’t imagine the place without him. Also, I liked the way he wrote; straight, honest, and with clarity and wit that too often went unappreciated. For an editor as skittish and inexperienced as me, he was a godsend.

At the end of March, he told me he’d been diagnosed with a type of cancer that had a 20% survival rate. At the start of April, he told me he had found out he wasn’t in that 20%. He said he wanted to keep writing for as long as he could. Somehow, it turned out that was up till last week. He passed away in hospital in London earlier today, aged 52.

Martin Skidmore will always be my favourite Jukebox writer. I am proud to call him my friend.

WBS

If you dislike dismal or at least overrated seaside locales, there’s this:

[Video][Website]
[7.89]

Sally O’Rourke: I’ve never been to Torbay, but I gather from “The Bay” that its designation as “the English Riviera” is viewed with some degree of irony. But the song’s soft rock falsetto and “This isn’t Paris/And this isn’t London” refrain aren’t just tongue-in-cheek digs at the harbor’s provincialism; they’re the type of jokes made to avoid discussing the uncomfortable truth. The relationship at the heart of “The Bay” is in crisis, but at least one of the parties refuses to admit it. He pleads for another summer in the bay, as if he could restore the past by reenacting it, as if his lover weren’t growing restless, impatient for more exotic climes, in need of a bigger world than he can provide. All of which sounds like “The Bay” should be a sopping wet dishrag, but Metronomy leaven the pathos with piss-taking and impeccable grooves. Heartbreak is there if you want it; if not, there’s that bassline.
[9]

Edward Okulicz: Metronomy’s off-kilter style, here rhythmic but oddly calmative, has gradually been winning me over through successive singles and Joseph Mount’s outside production work. “The Bay” represents them at their most compelling; it’s a great tune, for starters, the woozy chorus is like a clinically depressed ELO/Human League mongrel and the verses’ speak-singing make the simple lyrics evocative — of dismal English beaches, ennui, heartbreak, nostalgia, whatever you want them to be. Best of all, the loping bassline gives it life and movement, nowhere near propulsive enough to be floor-shaking, but enough to give the hips as much reason to sigh as the heart.
[9]

Zach Lyon: I don’t find this quite as good as their previous one, but hey, I also never expected they would ever grow in stature beyond one really great Breakbot remix. “The Bay” barely sounds like a song if you’re not paying attention — its parts all meld together with a sort of intentional artistry that wants to exceed simple structure. Timely, with all those McCartney pieces recently; this sounds like a direct descendant of Paul’s late 70s output, especially London Town and Back to the Egg, with their falsetto harmonies and hard disco posturing.
[7]

Kat Stevens: Despite growing up in a London suburb many miles from the coast, I have completely fallen for the gentle, complex whirl of Metronomy’s The English Riviera and its small-town seaside mindset. Most of the tracks are less lively than “The Bay” — sleepy harmonies rudely interrupted by queasy fairground rides and the odd punch-up outside the chippy, irresistible siren-calls from the mostly-annoying girlfriend that you can’t quite bring yourself to dump, everyone going round in circles and making the same mistakes. “The Bay” is the sore thumb of the album, the urge to break free of the cycle, the Patrick McGoohan character in The Prisoner. His neighbours seem perfectly content with their captivity and by accident or design always seem to scupper his repeated attempts to leave (indeed on occasion it is Patrick himself that unwittingly foils his own escape plans). To make things worse, the freedom and variety of Patrick’s previous life as a jet-setting sports-car-driving spy contrasts hugely with the slow, repetitive pace of The Village. The closest experience I’ve had to this was going back to live at my parents’ house after my post-university travels: skint, trapped, unable to leave without money, unable to get money without leaving (no graduate jobs with less than an hour’s commute), arguing with Mum about not having any firm plans and wishing I was still exploring Europe. But this isn’t Paris, Berlin, Hong Kong or even proper London – you are Number 6 this is Zone 6 and you will never escape. 
[9]

Anthony Easton: Elegant, louche, and pleasurably cosmopolitan, while refusing the standard narratives of cosmopolitan (you can dance on yachts in your mind, or at least in Devon) with a glorious chorus and an epic, Tangerine Dream-esque denouement.
[8]

Brad Shoup: When Metronomy namecheck various jetsetting capitals, it’s just as shameless as when Huey Lewis & Co. did the same. In this case, though, it’s to add a rich-dude frisson to yet another bloodless electronic-rock song. A James Murphy influence looms over the phrasing and text; the baroque disco could very well be the result of having the concept of Sparks described via telegram. Pitch-perfect blogfodder.
[5]

Michaela Drapes: A proper, charming Italodisco homage absent the bizarre complications of trying to make faux Eurosleaze. Sure, there’s requisite high hats and popping disco octaves and detached, bored vocals and a perfectly strange guitar bridge, all layered over a grand, puffy synth smash. But there’s something else, too — a quiet dose of Englishness, a shimmering glamor with heart — that makes it all work just so. 
[9]

Jer Fairall: “Don’t You Want Me” relationship drama stripped to the bone by Gang of Four bass-y minimalism.  An intriguing post-modern experiment in theory, though in execution it never finds much reason for existing beyond the singer’s charmingly arch delivery of “you said everything about it moved on your career.” 
[5]

Rebecca Toennessen: I always thought Devon was a beautiful, sun-drenched holiday destination, but the Metronomy dudes have made a brilliant concept album all about how it’s shit and depressing, and like quicksand powered by pure ennui, it sucks you in and traps you. Defining a place by what it’s not works wonderfully, as do the detached vocals. This song reminds me in a weird way of the brilliant new Man Man album — springy, bouncy songs which are still about death and misery. This song has been a staple of the Six Music playlist for a while now, and deservedly so.  
[10]

If you like [insert British 80s group here], there’s also this:

[Video][Website]
[6.50]

Katherine St Asaph: “Still Life” sounds like the product of stumbling out into 3 a.m. streetlights, app-grafting a beat onto whatever ambience you find there and pretending your scruffy, drink-doused voice has become Chris Martin’s. By 4 a.m., you’re still standing there, convinced that “when you wake up, you will find me” is romantic and, if repeated enough times with proper swoon, will prove itself right. You wake up alone.
[6]

Alfred Soto: Those synths — have these boys been listening to The Head on the Door-era Cure? The singer — is he imitating Ian McCullough without the phlegm and vibrato? No wonder he hides behind the backwards tape effect which provides the hook. Is that why they call the song “Still Life” — they’re capturing a privileged moment of post-eighties goth contemplation?
[6]

Anthony Easton: Mild discontentment is not horror. 
[6]

Michaela Drapes: It’s a slow motion time machine ride; these crate-diving younguns have made it up to the Thompson Twins and Echo and The Bunnymen discographies, apparently. Not that I’m complaining; I find The Horrors’ knack for musical ventriloquism fascinating, as they always skim right over nostalgic sinkholes and bring best of the past into dazzling relief right here in the present. “Still Life” may essentially sound about thirty years old, but there’s a modern vibrancy (and perhaps it’s just modern production techniques) that explodes old familiar themes beyond the safe and cozy boundaries of memory. [Full disclosure: I once spent a few hours in a miniscule firetrap of a green room with The Horrors without actually realizing it was them — until sometime the next day.]
[8]

Rebecca Toennessen: This is really 80s, in a good way! I can’t think of who the singer reminds me of – maybe the dude from Simple Minds? When I first heard this on the radio I thought it was an old song I hadn’t heard before. Takes some time, but is certainly a grower — solid rhythm section, capable guitar & synth and that oh-so-familiar voice. 
[7]

Ian Mathers: One of the reasons I liked the Horrors’ last album was its determined sonic and lyrical ugliness, viciousness even, but now seems like a perfect time for them to turn gently reassuring instead. As the band continues its surprisingly effective embrace of the dreamier, post-shoegaze end of its influences, they start seeming both more out of time and more of this time. I used to think that they were going to be our Cramps (and didn’t think much of them at the time, no disrespect to the Cramps); now it appears that they’re going to our Comsat Angels, and I’m overjoyed at the prospect.
[8]

Jer Fairall: Ocean Rain-era Echo and the Bunnymen evoked so accurately that I’m genuinely surprised, mostly because I thought that this was a well visited so often by so many post-millennial indie bands  it must have run dry by now.  These guys get points for their attentiveness to certain details that others failed to recognize — the slow build rather than the immediate blur, the epic synth lines — but I still can’t get over how this has basically made its point long before it ends, and how no amount of appreciation of genre tropes done right can keep my attention from drifting every time I try to get through this feeling as enthralled as I know I should be.
[6]

Jake Cleland: As Tom Ewing pointed out in his excellent Guardian column, The Horrors have smoothed out all their edges and in doing so become another boringly tedious British rock band (I’m paraphrasing slightly).. I feel like the minority in saying this, but they used to be such an excitingly wild act who, totally typically, have been ruined by the pursuit of success. The contrast between “Count in Fives” from their first album and this is like bumping into a kid you hung out with in high school five years later. Doing coke with all your friends in that squat was unreal but now he’s a supermarket store manager and it makes you wonder whether he’s become more boring or if you’ve just refused to grow up. Either way you still long for those days. Everyone changes, and how unfortunate.
[1]

Brad Shoup: Thank your friendly local A&R rep, kids. In just a few years the Horrors have gone from Stooges to Idiots. Every step on their journey – and admittedly, I keep checking out only to snap back — has been marked by its own kind of decadence: from smirking garage punk to motorik/Suicide nods to the single at hand (Each step has been visually documented in suitable, myth-making fashion). “Still Life” is just stunning, a stately cod-Morrison march – and this is coming from someone whose ten favorite Doors songs are “Touch Me” and “Hyacinth House”. Melodically, the chorus is a blood relative of the latter, but where Jimbo was croaking on the floor, Faris leers from about two feet overhead. It’s a slow groove, and some will certainly find the arrangement elementary, but unease this powerfully engineered is its own kind of decadence.
[10]

Kat Stevens: It’s awful when you hear a band’s name and superimpose the qualities and recollections of a similarly-named but 100% more loathsome band onto their music, which you have yet to hear. I heard this song on the radio and couldn’t believe that the dreadful bunch of coke-addled tossers my band shared a bill with 7 years ago could come up with something good enough to be played on said radio. Thankfully my memory is bad and The Horrors are far better than their name suggests.
[7]

If you like [insert British electro singer songwriter type], then there’s also this!

[Video][Website]
[7.50]

Brad Shoup: A classic example of CW rock: punchy, a little skittish, and British. Is the singer in erotic throes? Physically repulsed? Super sardonic? Figure it out before Alex Patsavas does!
[8]

Katherine St Asaph: What is wrong with songwriters? Two-thirds of this is fantastic, vocalist Sarah Mcintosh going furious over what sounds like the “Running Up That Hill” beat re-scored for ninjas, then comes a rinky-dinky major-key plink of a chorus that aims for Robyn but ends up as a throaty Diana Vickers. This trick has been called “the soar,” but it torpedoes “Skeleton” and its premise. The verses are sexy. They have passion. The chorus is as sexy as somebody stripping down to reveal Terry Richardson’s decrepit, cheesecake-posed cadaver.
[6]

Edward Okulicz: “Skeleton” makes a great listen if you admire La Roux’s energy but can’t abide by the screeching, or if you wish Ellie Goulding put out something a bit more full-blooded. The chorus in particular sounds like Goulding, conversely the verses seethe with tension and pace, courtesy of some powerful drumming. Sarah Mcintosh has a feisty sneer that drips sex, too.
[8]

Ian Mathers: “Skeleton” is a briskly efficient little piece of dance pop, but as seems to be the case with me these days, what I really like are the lyrics. Pop has plenty of “ooh, look at me, I’m all naked and ready to make the sex with you, which you want because I am very sexy” songs, and plenty of “I really like you and therefore I am going to present myself to you without pause or artiface, and hopefully you will like me too” songs (although admittedly probably more of the former than the latter), but that bifurcation is a fiction. In real life the two feelings/situations combine and collide all the time, and “Skeleton” collapses the language used in both modes; eventually “I’m taking it all off for you” muddles the come-on and the moment of terrible vulnerability until you can’t tell which is which. “Skeleton” is about sex, but not just sex in a way that’s both rare and appealing (because for most of us, it’s never “just” sex in real life either).
[8]

Iain Mew: I slightly miss the more electronic sounds of her earlier material, but she’s done a great job of producing an even more direct take on the Ellie Goulding/Diana Vickers school of peppy alt-pop songs about horrific metaphorical violence and/or sex. The sneering manner in which she draws out the notes at the end of each line of the verses is a real delight, and the way in which she sounds completely in control despite on the surface presenting her total vulnerability is really compelling in a different way to either of the above, who both sounded more confused and conflicted. “Skeleton” isn’t without its conflicts but mostly sounds like one long defiant (and catchy!) taunt.
[8]

Alex Ostroff: Sarah McIntosh splits the difference between Ellie Goulding and Elly Jackson, with the unnecessary addition of Kate Nash’s glottal stops, which is one strike against The Good Natured. The guitar atmospherics under the opening verse are blandly angsty, which is a second. At the 35 second mark, however, the synths peek out from beneath the gloom, and the chorus bursts forth with ridiculous (and ridiculously wonderful) cries of “So hot! Don’t stop!”. By the second verse, the ponderously intoned “naked” and “taken” no longer give the impression of self-seriousness; instead, they evoke the mock-serious tones of Marina & the Diamonds. The contrast between the chorus and the verses is still a bit too jarring to be seamless, but it will probably still make my Hallowe’en Dance Party Playlist.
[7]

Alfred Soto: Opening with splashy drums straight out of Beauty and the Beat-era Go-Go’s and a get-out-of-bed riff stolen from who knows where, this electropop nymphet hasn’t figured out why she’s jumping up and down on the bed so excitedly. She’s in love with a sound — a good start. Pop music lives on good starts.
[6]

Zach Lyon: SO HAWT! DON’T STAWP! And then that middle eight! This is a song about sex, and it’s not about pleasing someone else, or bragging about her skillz, or making any false attempts at true unity. It’s just pleasure. But she balances power and vulnerability so equally it comes off as dorky and human. And actually sexy. In the world of Songs About Sex, that’s a rarity.
[7]

Jonathan Bogart: I really love this. It reminds me of falling in love with the music of the Pipettes, Sophie Ellis-Bextor, Sally Shapiro, and Paris Hilton in the summer of 2006; which for a lot of people is as damning a list as could be rattled off. But as someone who automatically starts out suspicious of twee-sounding indie electropop, I was thoroughly won over by the end of the song.
[8]

Michaela Drapes: Like I’d be able to give some fun and cheerfully dark electropop made by what seems to be a savant-ish itty bitty girlchild version of David Sylvian anything less than a near-perfect score? Bitch, please.
[9]

I get the funny feeling that every time we review this band, the picture’s gonna look roughly the same…

[Video][Myspace]
[6.33]

Katherine St Asaph: A skeptic’s guide to loving Wild Flag: acquire this song, then immediately change the tags to “Unknown Artist – Romance – Unknown Album”. Wait until you’ve forgotten you’re following instructions. When you’re not reading this, you’ll shuffle upon “Romance” and there’s no way you won’t love it. See, “Romance” is Wild Flag’s pop coup, all the stronger for being marshaled by seasoned instrumentalists instead of reverb-happy knobs with bookers and bloggers’ Gchat info. Every component of this is among the most joyful of its kind: the skeleton snaps of the guitar, the drums that leap and burst to attention and that glorious point at the two-minute mark where it’s just Carrie Brownstein and Mary Timony right up front in unison. It doesn’t matter what you thought of Sleater-Kinney, Helium, or any of their comparison points; if you can’t find something to love here, I don’t understand your definition.
[9]

Pete Baran: I surprised myself by liking “Future Crimes” so much, but am less surprised about liking the much poppier “Romance.” Since then it strikes me the Wild Flag project is in some ways a re-run of the Breeders / Belly style bands where the members with pop nouse from spikier bands seem to be clubbing together to make the kind of records they always wanted to make. And “Romance” gives us new-wave spikiness, with a decent melodic through-line. Supergroups were never meant to be this good.
[8]

Brad Shoup: If you’re in the game long enough, it’s even money you’ll record the music-saved-my-life song. It’s tempting to see this in terms of histories (All Hands on the Bad One-era handclaps, lead lines from The Dirt of Luck), but let’s characterize it as some alt-rock lifers holding it down. Timony strikes a fine balance between pop clarity and the mystical stuff; the song itself attempts the same thing, but the toggling between the disparate sections sheds some momentum. Now to figure out what that intro reminds me of…
[7]

Jake Cleland: I’m hearing Fiery Furnaces in the verses but the chorus is all Sleater-Kinney. In the spirit of SK walking away at the top of their game, this could do with being about a minute shorter and cutting it at the breakdown, or having the claps pushed back. It has a strong sound but it becomes really repetitious; the real climax is in the verse after “shake shimmy shake”, that’s where it should’ve dropped and the more I listen to it, the more I wish it didn’t drag on. Carrie Brownstein, if you’re reading this and you’d like a new producer…
[5]

Michaela Drapes: The burning question: Why doesn’t Wild Flag have a bassist? This song is missing all the sex and all the funk that a rollicking bottom line could bring to the table. Instead, poor Janet Weiss is left beating away in the back alone, doing the heavy lifting of two people. Mary Timony’s blazing but brief guitar bits help a little, but mostly, I just can’t get past Carrie Brownstein’s interminably snotty and whiny singsongy little girl vocals. Grow up, honey.
[3]

Alfred Soto: Mary Timony gets some slick licks in, the organ is agreeably rinky-dink, and the drums above average. Carrie Brownstein, it pains me to say, is merely average. Not only are her garbled vowels an annoyance, but I’m beginning to recoil from her decade-long fascination with songs about music: not what music sounds like when it makes you feel good, but What Music Should Say. “You’re No Rock N Roll Fun” fine, but “Combat Rock” and especially “Entertain” have the gusto of a Stalin-era apparatchik sending dissenters to work camps. Like the bloodcurdling NPR column she used to write, Brownstein enjoy prescriptive methods of education. I’d forgive even this if she could sing like the much-missed Corin Tucker.
[6]

Sally O’Rourke: Even if “Romance” lacks the directness of “Future Crimes,” it makes a better single. It’s so stuffed with hooks, it’s like a scrapbook of new wave’s greatest female-fronted hits: a Go-Go’s chorus, “One Way or Another” guitar riffing, Lene Lovich vocals, even a bit of “Mickey” cheerleading. But there’s also enough raggedness to Wild Flag that prevents “Romance” from coming too close to pastiche, and enough conviction in the performances to skirt both nostalgia and irony.
[8]

Alex Ostroff: This is a lovely mess of noise, but one that’s been perfectly calibrated and meticulously arranged. The verses have all the passion, with carefully deployed sloppiness in the guitar and keys to create dissonance on particular emotional notes – sickness, cracks, etc. – while the chorus is calculatedly disaffected. It might be retro pastiche, but it sounds damn good.
[7]

Anthony Easton: These women are genius. They are true Rock and Roll saints. I love how collective they are, and how collective they have been for a long time, how they pass around bands and responsibilities, and just love performing. So this pains me. This isn’t good. It’s respectable, it’s passable, it’s diverting, but it’s not good. Maybe high standards are confusing my ears, maybe I’m getting old or their getting old, or something, but it seems rote. Sort of like, sometimes you get together and make work that you are convinced is genius, and automatic, and sometimes you get together and make work that reflects the randomness of the process, and sometimes you get together and make work that reflects yr lived experience, but has nothing of the skill of the former or the charm of the latter–it’s sort of like that… 
[4]

Look at his face. Just look at his face…

[Video][Website]
[3.56]

Anthony Easton: The harmonies when they talk about “tonight” are so sweet, genteel, and pretty that those two words have an exquisiteness that formally excuses any of the other pandering. 
[5]

Brad Shoup: Wow. Now Lady A’s flinging themselves headfirst into predestination pop. I could see this scoring a MADD-style purity slideshow, only instead of flipped cars it’s all wailing babies and contemplative shots of shattered dishes. Do these guys even have another gear besides ‘ballad’? Their aural anaesthesia has taken a dark turn, and proms are gonna suffer as a result.
[2]

Katherine St Asaph: This tensionless shrug is the best argument against abstinence ever.
[4]

Michaela Drapes: I believe what you’re actually hearing here is the aural equivalent of a thousand sighing Twi-moms sucking all the air out of the room at the sight of a shirtless Taylor Lautner.
[0]

Edward Okulicz: It’s all very well having nice harmonies, but neutering your best asset — Hillary Scott’s emotive power — in service of a snoozy ballad about waiting marks you out as generic AOR hucksters who fluked it big, rather than reliable writers of crossover smashes. Look, nobody loved “Need You Now” more than I did, but I’m imagining a world in which Gloriana’s anti-waiting “Wild At Heart” was the song that got the country-pop Grammy bonanza and it’s a much better place, believe me.
[4]

Alfred Soto: “I don’t wanna push too far,” the two singers harmonize, and they mean it. More and more it sounds like “Need You Now” was the kind of songwriting and singing fluke that professionals spend decades repeating. On the bright side, these guys could spend decades cranking out theme songs for WB dramas.
[4]

Alex Ostroff: Lady Antebellum’s vocal chemistry is undeniable, but I haven’t heard a song since “Need You Now” that capitalises on it properly. “Just A Kiss” tries to recapture lightning in a bottle with another bad-idea sexual tension narrative. Unfortunately, they don’t really sell me on the idea that rushing things is as bad an idea as drunk dialing the ex, and their declarations that it’s “so hard to hold back” are utterly unconvincing. Bring back the smoulder, please?
[4]

Sally O’Rourke: For a song about fighting the flames of lust, “Just a Kiss” has zero spark. Lady Antebellum can’t seem to figure out that a duet doesn’t work if the voices don’t meld together. How am I supposed to believe they’re struggling to keep their hands off each other if they don’t even sound like they’re in the same studio?
[3]

Ian Mathers: She’s got a lovely voice, and the sentiment is awfully sweet and not even that old-fashioned (any physical reticence seems to be coming out of a fear of scaring the other person off, not fear of sin), and honestly it’s nice to have a song that’s about liking someone so much that you’re terrified of screwing things up instead of turning into a combination Lothario/stalker instead. Unfortunately, his voice is like the end of the video, tipping the whole thing over into soft-rock mawkishness. I can’t seem to get past it, any more than I can bring myself to care about Brady and Joy’s meet-extremely-cute.
[6]

They’ve got a song called “Whoa Is Me”. Yeah…

[Video][Myspace]
[1.75]

Jer Fairall: Dear Rest Of The World: I am so very, very sorry. Love, Canada.
[1]

Katherine St Asaph: Oh my god, 3OH!3 are spawning.
[2]

Edward Okulicz: It’s difficult to imagine how this song could be any worse. All the elements that make up the most obnoxious music are present and incorrect here: mild drug references and atrocious slang to titillate easily-titilated teenagers; shouting to make people think this is some combination of loud, exciting or dangerous; and a horrible mix of zipping keyboards, dull, numbing riffs and incompetent slap beats too stiff and clumsy to properly dance to. Even a sure-fire bit of ear candy like adding crowd-pleasing “whoa”s to the chorus backfires because they pancake so many of them together that you just wish these damn fools would do some permanent damage to their vocal cords. This, truly, is music for people lacking any kind of discernment or aesthetic consciousness, who think songs that mention “dope” are cool and naughty, and those who make it should be sternly judged.
[0]

Brad Shoup: I’m getting all these extratextual tingles. It’s nice to know that there’s still room on the charts for skewed alt-rock crossovers. From “She Don’t Use Jelly” to “Pumped Up Kicks,” it’s a proud lineage. I’d peg Down With Webster in the OPM/Bad Ronald quadrant: a little bit of groove for the snots who can’t hang with hardcore, but nothing that’s gonna put them in the wrong clique. It’s pretty bad though, I’m not gonna lie. One point added for the sXe chorus; screw or don’t screw, just own it.
[3]

Michaela Drapes: They’re crumbelieveable!
[0]

Alfred Soto: “I’m just bein’ honest/Ain’t that better than a gentleman?” Not really, no. 
[0]

Ian Mathers: These guys have been big with the kids in Canada for a few years now, and they still seem to have no discernable personality (or use for at least half of their six members). Unsurprisingly, then, “She’s Dope” is a pablum-consistency blend of bits taken from elsewhere on the charts. The lyrics are beneath notice, the big “woah-oh-oh-oh”s on the chorus fall flat, the combination of rapping and singing does neither any favours. The only redeeming feature of DWW is that they’re not even distinctive enough to be very painful.
[4]

Zach Lyon: I know I should hate this, but I can’t. It feels like something that would fit in so easily into Modern Rock radio circa 2001, an era I am now snobby enough to declare an “underrated bright spot” of the 00s, and not only because it was all I listened to back then. This at least matches the attitude, the douchiness, the entitlement that drove that sound, and it hits a nostalgia spot for me, and betraying that would mean betraying Deryck Whibley. And I can’t do that.
[4]

Nothing remotely this exciting happens in the song…

[Video][Website]
[4.14]

Anthony Easton: I really don’t like Jimmy Buffett, but was surprised at how angry and adroit his single about the recent economic scandal (“A Lot to Drink About”) was — it was easy jokes; but easy jokes done by the yuppie libertine about class meant something. And i really love the musical skills of the Zac Brown Band, but this isn’t even low key, by the numbers and sort of insulting. Though it will be a monster hit.
[4]

Alfred Soto: Promoting the virtues of indolence since the Ford administration and a multimedia empire since Clinton’s, Jimmy Buffett has a couple of things to show Zac Brown and the rest of us. Brown luckily reminds the old bum about fingerpicked guitar.
[5]

Jonathan Bogart: Not that the Zac Brown Band had far to fall, but working with Jimmy Buffett — the Grand Old Man of low-ambition good times, not to mention Volvo colonialism — seals my low opinion. Shame the tune’s so damn catchy.
[5]

Michaela Drapes: Buffett seems more chill than usual here; there’s almost a quiet glint of resignation in his voice as he serves up his flat verse. Come to think of it, this is less Zac Brown goes Parrothead and more Zac Brown goes Colbie Caillat. Instead of successfully extolling the virtues of getting away from it all, it’s pretty vapid and uninspired. Usually I’d be hip to having a Corona or two on the beach in Mexico with these guys, but not if this song is the soundtrack.
[3]

Katherine St Asaph: Zac Brown makes an OK Brophelia, but he’s too chill in his placeless chilly water to make his guitars or voice do more than trip the light “Lazy Song.” At least he’s self-aware as he doesn’t care.
[4]

Brad Shoup: I fell halfway hard for Jimmy Buffett in the last 18 months. Even if the songs weren’t great — and they totally are — he’s a hustler’s hustler, so respect. So now it’s Zac Brown’s turn to graft El Buffett onto his summer single. I like Brown; he’s got Chad Kroeger’s gift for cadence, which results in an interchangeable series of songs that, respectively, put you in a lakegoing mood and make you inform your Facebook acquaintances of your upcoming MMA match. Eminently singable pop-reggae.
[8]

Ian Mathers: A marriage made in the deepest pits of my own personal hell, and somehow more painful than I expected.
[0]

Featuring? Tucking away in a corner more like…

[Video][Myspace]
[4.43]

Katherine St Asaph: “How We Roll” is less a pop song than proof of the singularity. The synths shock like naked copper wire or molten metal. Loick Essien’s autotuned virtuosity is how the robots imagine themselves sounding as they bloop into their USB hairbrushes. Tanya Lacey, the most human of the lot, nevertheless affects patois as robo-blase as Dev. They’ve learned to make a love song, but the lyrics sound like some Decepticons wrote them before a post-coital ambush. There’s no conceivable way to enjoy “How We Roll” unless half your brain stem’s been replaced with computer chips, and it scares me how much I like it anyway.
[8]

Rebecca Toennessen: This is what Outer Space Music would have sounded like when I was about four and wondering about such things as what Outer Space Music would sound like. Unfortunately, it’s not as exciting as four year old me would have imagined.
[5]

Renato Pagnani: And the dying gasps of songs featuring Auto-Tuned R&B vocalists over shitty trance communicate little regret for the lives they lived, mostly because their last words were unintelligible mush.
[2]

Jonathan Bogart: Chirruping AutoTune, triumphalist synths, not a single original sentiment or even phrasing of sentiment. Doesn’t matter.
[7]

Michaela Drapes: Out of all the sheer-voiced shrieking crooners foisting love songs and guest hooks on us from every corner, Loick Essien’s voice is the least pleasant, which every painful moment of this song hammers home. Also, I fail to see what exactly Tanya Lacey was doing here in her calorie-free blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo; it would seem that the ‘ft.’ trend has reached its nadir too on this one.
[1]

Jer Fairall: Might sound okay playing over a slo-mo shot of The World’s Least Appealing Leading Man and Michael Bay’s Latest Casting Couch Victim speeding away from an explosion, but of little practical use elsewhere.
[4]

Brad Shoup: In which driving to the Tesco becomes the stuff of high drama. “Featuring” isn’t defined strictly here; Tanya Lacey gets like four bars of patois before she’s dispatched to navigate or look for a rest stop or something. I swear I hear a chipmunk laughing at 1:28. Am I mad?
[4]

Nominated for the Nontroversy Index!

[Video][Website]
[6.22]

Iain Mew: Jamie’s album soon ended up in my “impressed but somehow I don’t actually go back to listen to it all that much” column. This, one of its more watery songs, goes some way to demonstrating why and seems an odd choice of single. The creepy atmospherics are still there, it improves once it strips things down later on and it ends on a particularly cutting and effective note, but it takes an age to get there.
[5]

Brad Shoup: A pretty straightfoward Mirrorwriting cut. Would’ve loved for the bass go on a longer walk, but maybe I’m not getting the concept of tension.
[6]

Anthony Easton: Really Really Boring, even with the electronic gimcrackery. 
[4]

Jonathan Bogart: He’s a better singer than James Blake, and possibly a more complete songwriter too, though his arrangements are just as soporific and glacial. So why does he slide past the ear like melting butter where Blake sticks like grotty syrup? Unwelcome maybe, but it’s there.
[6]

Renato Pagnani: Woon’s voice is a piece of crumpled tissue paper, floating through the track’s pre-dawn purple haze, echoes of dubstep’s off-kilter wobble in the distance, the sun in the slow process of rising and returning the heat it took with it the night before. His vocals have no rudder; they blow where the wind takes them, possessing a kind of relaxed strength that could easily draw the spotlight’s focus to them instead of lurking in the shadows, unable to be pinned down, as they desire to here. And like his vocals, this track keeps its feet moving, something sinister and smothering bubbling under its surface.
[7]

Michaela Drapes: I found myself wishing desperately, for the first two minutes or so, for this to break out of its predictable verse chorus verse mold and veer off somewhere a little more interesting. But then that slap bass kicked in and it actually did. And then I got sidetracked into thinking that this reminded me of something way way way in the back of my brain. I don’t really remember hoping that 2011 would see a Tanita Tikaram revival, but here it is anyway! Now if only Jamie could get over being so sing-y.
[6]

Ian Mathers: If The Weeknd and Frank Ocean are indie R’n’B, this is R’n’B indie, but despite that dire prognosis “Shoulda” is a particularly shy kind of lovely. Does Woon do anything that isn’t drifty/floaty? Luckily, I like drifty/floaty, and “Shoulda” is actually pretty compelling in its own wispy way. I sense diminishing returns approaching swiftly, though.
[7]

Edward Okulicz: You can dress this song up as much as you like, but you can hear that spiritually, it belongs with an acoustic guitar in 1992. No bad thing, every generation needs its own iteration of Mondeo Pop. If anything, the production detracts from Woon’s wounded sighing croon — the dead air is his ideal backdrop.
[8]

Katherine St Asaph: This is how regrets work: you should have walked where you should have run, or vice versa; you’re not even sure how the shoulds configure themselves. You can try configuring them yourself for months, but you smother that idea down to the background, all haze and fuzz and thoughts circular and meandering as the taps in the backing track. You should have been specific, should’ve let your words sting instead of crumpling over themselves. You should have let the pads and the tectonic crackle of the percussion go where they wanted to, or at least let them split the surface a little; you should’ve brought your voice to a crescendo, even a small one, or let your harmonies do something other than mutter back at you. You should have noticed that bass puttering around and given it a direction. You should’ve written a proper ending, made this more than a diverting, lingering sigh. Your four minutes should’ve done more, counted more. Don’t you know it.
[7]