Eurogliders, Bryan Adams, Warrant, Emeli Sande, Psychedelic Furs.. this doesn’t sound like any of them.

[Video][Website]
[5.57]

Anthony Easton: The vocals are on the wrong edge of insipid, and the diva theatrics never rise full enough to be completely fascinating, and the lyrics, oi, the lyrics — just a mess of dull thoughts sung better by other people. But the music, the froth of it, the choppy guitar, a piano that is not quite plinky redeems it.
[6]

Brad Shoup: I dig how Ailee sings “heaven,” how it become ecstatic gibberish when strung to itself repeatedly. She works a few vocal modes (delicate control, teen-ballad brassiness, R&B talk-sing), all between commendable and exquisite. Still, this type of pop devotional falls in the wrong quadrant of the VH1 coordinate system I use to judge pretty much every creative thing.
[5]

Iain Mew: The production keeps this interesting, with drum beats snapping away, piano that distorts and refuses to settle into the expected constancy and some subtle backing vocals. The problem is that while Ailee’s full-on megaphone vocals work for the chorus, and her softer tones work for the start of each verse, there’s long stretches in between where she sits awkwardly with everything else. Meanwhile, Gi Kwang turns in the most desultory guest appearance since last week.
[5]

John Seroff: I’m completely taken with this beautifully rendered puffball.  The pulsing chorus of “HEAVENEAVENEAVENEAVEN” might as well be a ray gun zapping my pleasure centers; it’s everything grandiose and foolish in pop condensed and ululated with disabling precision.  I’m perfectly happy with “Heaven” al fresco, but ditch The Sixth Sense video and translate for the Anglos and there’s zero reason in my mind this couldn’t rush up the US/UK pop charts.  The formula, she has been cracked.
[9]

Frank Kogan: “YouTube sensation” + “legit voice and chops” is not a formula that bodes well for actual artistry. And often enough, “singer + ballad” = “Frank tuning out.” But Ailee’s voice being clear and steady, and her ability to drop back and be fetching during verses and transitions, make this a pleasant surprise. Chorus is too loud, but it is pretty; so are the harmonies.
[6]

Jonathan Bogart: For a moment I thought the chorus was going to elevate this out of bathetic balladry, but the repeated “heaven”s don’t add up to anything more than a bunch of repeated “heaven”s, and her voice is neither strong enough nor strange enough to demand the listener’s interest on its own merits.
[4]

Alfred Soto: K-pop singles like this which attempt a amalgam of “American Idol” diva moments and adrenalin-fueled sugar rushes leave me uneasy. I mean, there’s a strong cover of the Eurogliders’ “Heaven (Must Be There)” fighting to get out!
[4]

If you look into the mirror and see Bruno Mars, break it, I say.

[Video][Website]
[4.00]

Jonathan Bogart: I just like listening to Lil Wayne so much that I’m more willing to tolerate gloopy introspection from him than from almost any other top-level rapper; but dragging Bruno Mars into it isn’t playing fair. There’s gloopy introspection, and then there’s nauseating self-indulgence. Bruno pretty much only traffics in the latter.
[5]

Anthony Easton: Weirdly soft, like that trick where whispering in a crowded room gets you attention quicker than shouting, except there is nothing here worthy of one’s attention. It’s not that it’s boring, or any of the other charges that excuse this lack of attention; it has an absence, and an absence that might be worth picking up if you thought it might be signifying something. 
[4]

Brad Shoup: Bruno’s the best part here, stepping wide of the Disney-DVD chorus of “Lighters” in favor of a pop-Gothic solemnity. He jumps to notes like he’s been hoisted by his suspenders, but I find the strain endearing. Weezy just deploys a series of dubious reveals and half-hearted puns. Sorry to pick nits, but his MJ footnote is gonna battle with Nicki’s “Last name is Zolanski/No relation to Roman Polanski” for 2012’s most unnecessary spelling-out of a reference. Lovers of empire take note: he seems to have exited his rococo period and shot straight into classical crossover.
[4]

Alfred Soto: When he sees his mom, dad, and the person he is and hates in the mirror, she doesn’t reassure him in the dulcet tones of Kelly Rowland — he belches from the depths of his soul in the adenoidal voice of Bruno Mars. Too serious to be camp.
[2]

John Seroff: It wasn’t that long ago that Wayne gave a damn — remember? Not that his lyrics were consistently brilliant (though they sometimes were) but there was a respectable passion for the word, a hunger that read burning and real. Now we get a half-baked meditation on narcissism swept up in faux Boadicea, the same remedial A/A, B/B, C/C rhyme scheme you used for the front page of your best friend’s yearbook and Bruno Fucking Mars. The emotion is false, the empathy is canned, the inspiration is baldly mercantile. Depressed fifteen year olds deserve better than this.
[3]

Iain Mew: “Mirror” deftly handles its navel-gazing, with Wayne adding enough humor and pride to balance out its potentially overbearing seriousness. Getting a guest singer to do something at all narratively interesting for once (e.g. playing his reflection) is a clever move too, even if the meta shout-outs slightly spoil the effect. It helps that I’ve been waiting for Bruno Mars to do something this Gothic since “Grenade.”
[7]

Katherine St Asaph: Whinging para-para-paradise…
[3]

In which we wonder (and ponder) if this truly is all her rage…

[Video][Website]
[6.86]

Jer Fairall: The secret weapon of last year’s A Creature I Don’t Know, “All My Rage” bounds forth at the end of the album (and directly following the mighty “Sophia”) feeling like a throwaway, brisk, spry and unfinished. The latter has less to do with the clipped length than the incompleteness of the narrative; we never even get a complete inventory of her children lost to the sea, as hysteria swallows up our Job-like narrator with the same fierce vengeance that the ocean swallowed her family All that’s left to do is to kick up her heels, tip her hat to the heavens and wink to God, “you’ve won.”
[8]

Anthony Easton:  The sea and the sun do the raging, so Laura doesn’t have to — it’s a neat trick. 
[6]

Alfred Soto: Emmylou Harris provides the trills, Dolly Parton the macabre subject filtered through sun and light, and Marling the gravitas to hold it together. Barely. 
[6]

Pete Baran: Ah, I love a good catharsis song. Not sure if it needs the storytelling aspects which fit it in some faux-folk, Wessexy 18th century tradition, but I guess you can’t fight the genre tropes. This builds impressively leaving the listener wanting considerably more at the end. Since there is no more, you go back and play its 2.45 again – which is a victory of sorts.
[8]

Brad Shoup: Although we’re nearly about to take New Weird America off our maps, Marling still recalls the beautiful close-harmony choirs of her forebears, and the line “tip your cap to the brave old girl” ends with a few Robin Williamsonesque flat notes. Otherwise, it’s a bright, confident folk track, accumulating instrumentation at a steady clip. Come out of the woods, everyone: spring is near. 
[8]

Jonathan Bogart: Pretty sure this is just some of her rage; you’d think all of it would be a little less sweet.
[5]

Katherine St Asaph: Any Laura Marling song will be frighteningly accomplished, and little will be wrong with it. I prefer confessions, though, to traditionalist curios.
[7]

Given a choice between fierceness and Drakeness, which one would you pick?

[Video][Website]
[5.78]

Jamieson Cox: Drake’s placement at the forefront of “Mr. Wrong” is a bit of a mystery to me: I figured that nearly two decades into her illustrious career, the Queen of Hip-Hop Soul had earned the right to the pole position on every one of her cuts, no matter how white-hot her guest star happens to be burning. The first minute could be an excerpt from a Take Care B-side, with its generic down-tempo maneuvers, patented blend of rapped and sung verse, and Bligelessness. Mary J. has an undeniable knack for infusing even the blandest material with a degree of emotional pull, but I can almost pinpoint the exact recipe for “Mr. Wrong”: eight hours in the studio, twelve emails back and forth with Drizzy, a mediocre beat gathering dust in a storeroom somewhere, and stank and pepper to taste. The result: another unmemorable piece of chart fodder.
[5]

Katherine St Asaph: Oh, that unctuous surprise Drake beginning the video; he stares you down with roughly the same look Chris Hansen gives Reddit. Here, he’s less Mr. Wrong than Mr. Wrongly Judged Flow, meandering through grumbles like “don’t it seem like, like I’m always there when it matters?” Don’t it. Fortunately, “Mr. Wrong” uses the “What’s My Name” template, which means it takes seconds to excise Drake and leave only Mary’s moodiness. Even then, she’s got better.
[6]

Jonathan Bogart: It’s easy enough to trim Drake out — he’s so stuck on autopilot that he doesn’t sound as if he’s even heard the rest of the song — but that still leaves a subpar Mary J. performance and a beat that sounds like the nth chillout remix of something that once snapped and strutted. Luckily, a subpar Mary J. performance is still a Mary J. performance.
[6]

Anthony Easton: A [2] or [3] for every Drake Verse, and a [10] for the almost religious ache of Blige’s gospel-tinged eroticism. The plodding beats, and the lack of proper decoration on the track itself, puts it on the negative edge of the median.
[4]

Sabina Tang: The cut without Drake is a [10] — and it’s not even that I dislike Drake, but his honking nasality puts an immediate dampener on the Caribou-esque gorgeousness of the backing track, from which the song takes a full verse to recover. That’s setting aside the structural oddity of letting the Darth Vader Boyfriend make his point first, before we’ve heard the charges, rather than the usual refutation or defusing. Perhaps it’s because Mary J., impossibly sad, would rather immolate than mount the offensive her friends might desire.
[9]

Brad Shoup: I should disclose that I’ve never cared for Blige’s perpetual campaign to make the song cry. But it’s three guys who’ve let her down, if you count her producers: they seem to have stopped at sluggish on the way to languid. I would’ve been happy to focus on the pointillistic pattering and the music box (a sound-cue that augurs no good, according to every movie ever), but the synth bass cuts a series of long farts to clear me out. As for Drake, he proves a too-apt partner in the should’ve-known-better.
[3]

Alfred Soto: Pairing these narcissists is like leaving two mirrors to get to know each other, and whaddya know, they do, although Drake’s presence is redundant enough for me to wonder who’s doing whom the favor. Reining in her penchant for yelling when given a clutch of self-help banalities, Blige sticks to the melody; she’s anguished and pissed off, no more no less, abetted by the sparkling, echo-laden production (love those organ notes). 
[7]

Michaela Drapes: How exactly am I supposed to read this: Mary the cougar? Drake the son of one of her galpals? Who cares, sans Drake’s blathering turn, this is a delicious slice of throwback quiet storm heartache — the kind of thing I hated as a teenager; the kind of thing I’m absolutely a bit of a sucker for now.
[7]

John Seroff: The ongoing success of Drake as anything more than a reflection of a generation’s vacuousness continues to depress me. “Canada Dry” was meant as a knock that the Great White North’s most profitable export wouldn’t bust a grape in a fruit fight, but it’s more accurately understood not as a comment about Drake’s unwillingness to get bloody but his bloodlessness. This chill isn’t from the Ice Box; it’s simple fatuous neglect, the vaguely ironic embrace of dead-eyed cynicism given broader voice in the tattered mimeographed sonics of Jim Jonson and Rico Love and anyone else who confuses guarded selfishness with mystery and seduction. Bad enough I have to put up with the zombie youth movement on its own, but when this eczema tarnishes the rich patina of our holy lady Mary J., it’s enough to make a man cry alligator tears.
[5]

Finnish folk-metal! (?)

[Video][Website]
[5.00]

John Seroff: Stop me if you’ve heard this one: Bonnie Tyler and Meat Loaf walk into a renaissance fair…
[3]

Alfred Soto: Jim Steinman would kill for the piano line, but instead of Bonnie Tyler we’ve got a Julia Fordham type cooing histrionic absurdities to a guy who’s supposed to be male.
[4]

Sabina Tang: Expected this to be slow-fast-reallyfastmetalbit; instead it stayed resolutely mid-tempo and flagged noticeably at the shred-free instrumental bridge. I had to click through several songs on the album before I got hold of a stirring Celtic-orchestral-thrash-chant that could actually work as D&D battle BGM. It’s about time I made a contribution to the communal playlist, mind you: my tabletop gaming group won’t tolerate hip-hop, dubstep, most electronica or 21st-century pop, and there are only so many Japanese RPG soundtracks, famous SF movie themes, and jokey folk strummers about pirates I’m willing to listen to on repeat.
[6]

Katherine St Asaph: It’s pointless to approach any new Nightwish song by imagining Tarja singing it. Nevertheless: imagine if Tarja sang this, if the crows and owls and doves and mealy-voiced dudes were dragons and giants.
[6]

Edward Okulicz: Heavy-handed on the lyrical imagery (which Tarja Turunen would have done better with), but melodically quite nimble (which maybe she wouldn’t have). Its portent is quite agreeable because it sounds like it could be a step away from being country until the power metal ballad touches come in two minutes in. Then it makes complete sense. I won’t explain the folksy flute jig section in the middle, but I won’t complain about it either.
[7]

Brad Shoup: Blur out the preposterous text and you’ve got a fine power ballad that lays off the strumming. Somehow I made it this far in life without having an extended fantasy period, and honestly, I envy those of my friends who hear a pan flute as transport, not torture. From the title on down, this song is chockablock with those cliffside-and-chimera signifiers. It’s got my sympathies, if not yet my loyalty.
[6]

Jonathan Bogart: There might possibly have been a time in my life when I would have been able to hear my way into this song, to hear the sweep as majestic rather than trite, the flute as otherworldly rather than dull, the voices as containing meanings deeper than those of mere mortals. But no. Good for them for doing what they want to do, and good for their fans for finding meaning in it; but I’m too old and heavy now to fit into the wardrobe.
[3]

Michaela Drapes: Nightmare scenario: I’m eating at an elaborate dim sum palace with an ex-boyfriend’s brother and sister-in-law (who travel the country selling bespoke leather gear and Sheffield steel-boned corsets at Ren Faires), trying desperately to explain the appeal of the Decemberists, who are stuffed on a tiny stage in the corner of the room playing a set of maudlin anime theme tunes on pan flutes, while everyone at the table screams at me for not making a home-cooked meal.
[2]

Anthony Easton: Everything about this is absurd — but it is awesome, so fucking awesome, like writing the lyrics using white-out on a black Trapper Keeper in grade 7 awesome. Everyone knows that nothing is more awesome than that.
[8]

You’ll never guess what the final sound in the video is…

[Video][Website]
[5.20]

Anthony Easton: It is unnerving that something you last saw in The Deer Hunter is used like this: a high-gloss video, complete with the onomatopoeic bang bang and lyrics that are explicitly suicidal. It’s an ancient metaphor — losing love is like dying — but there is something that remains uncanny in the gap of the almost manic fashion and the self destruction, especially in the last few moments. Can someone tell us what it means that this was banned by the MBC censor board?
[7]

Sabina Tang: An indubitable home run of a debut video: sexy, confident, “edgy”, and 100% aegyo-free. (I rather enjoy the recent run of K-pop video censor-baiting, without giving it more thought than to note that the gambit seems to be working out, sales-wise.) The song, too, is a mid-oughts-style production in a vein I’ve always enjoyed, and taken on its own is perhaps a tad lacking in surprise factor. Rihanna’s Russian-roulette-as-metaphor song still comes out the winner in the emotional compelling-ness sweepstakes, I guess.
[7]

John Seroff: “Roulette”‘s early nineties revivalist dancepop lifts a great deal of its swagger from the sort of good time new jack swing that wouldn’t sound out of place from any of BBD’s would-be stable, but there’s also a healthy dose of formality and mustiness in those dominant strings that evokes little more than the blankness of Dance Dance Elevator music. I’m reminded of Shanice’s which also balanced on the thin divider between VH1 and waiting room. There are worse things to wait with but better things to aspire to.
[6]

Pete Baran: The melodic intro remind me of Jean Jacques Perrey’s EVA, but unfortunately the vocals seem over sung and dominate the song. Whenever the backing attempts to break through it is battered down by theme tune singing. A few nice ideas battered down by what I can only assume is SPICA’s schtick.
[3]

Alfred Soto: Imagine Dallas Austin producing a trio of Gretchen Wilsons. Now imagine it smothered by power chords.
[4]

Michaela Drapes: For all the flirting with hard-edged glamour in the chorus, this gets a bit wooden and soft around the edges in the verses. Unfortunately, even the candy-coated nods to Bernard Hermann in the climax’s ominous timpani and eerie whistling can’t quite manage to heave this out of mediocrity.
[5]

Frank Kogan: Tense carefree pennywhistles, a pastorale backdrop painted with blotches, some smooth bang bang bang bang bang, clouds twisting romantically. None of the pieces fit. The landscape wants to stretch out comfortably, but quarters are cramped. Guns want to shoot, but trajectories drift in the breeze. I’m confused.
[6]

Iain Mew: This is just too much for me. There’s too much happening and none of it particularly appealing or exciting, especially not the strings which just will not shut up. It just ends up smothering. I wasn’t too surprised to find out that it shares writers and producers with Kara’s “Step”, which I disliked nearly as much.
[2]

Jonathan Bogart: I want the drama to be more overcharged than this; suicidal ideation requires either much, much more or much, much, less.
[5]

Brad Shoup: I admit I’m not familiar with SPICA’s house rules, but I’ve always heard that if the gun goes “BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG,” you did it wrong. Ah well. There are two major components: the sassy, cosmopolitan intro/outro melody and the body proper, which is symphonic new jack swing. Sweetune’s incorporated the bouncy and the orchestral before — with a bit more power and opacity, for whatever that’s worth. Not much in the way of rap breaks here, just various harmony combos and a melody that gains more lamentation the longer they work with it. I presume we can look for their K-black metal effort soon.
[7]

“Real-time popular searched keyword, bro.”

[Video][Website]
[5.50]

Michaela Drapes: So I used to get my hair cut in Chinatown, and now I go to a Japanese joint in the New School/NYU student ghetto, so believe me when I tell you that I have had almost all of these dudes’ haircuts at some point in the past five years — even the platinum anime ‘do — but not the fauxhawks. This factoid is indicative of my response to this track — pretty much unmitigated glee, especially for the dance keiretsu Mortal Kombat meets West Side Story video. I’m not entirely sure I’d listen to this again, but the first time sure was a fun ride.
[7]

Katherine St Asaph: My God, it’s a fucking Andru Donalds track interpreted by boy-banders who love LMFAO, 3OH!3 and other bands with names like trolls. Music is hurtling toward this being cool — give the States two years, if that — and I don’t understand. Like, what the fuck is pop even doing?
[4]

Pete Baran: I originally thought this was called Narnia, and thought it might be a through the back of the wardrobe Korean translation of the Backstreet Boys. Not much is lost in the swish between the fur coats to get to this, but I’m not going to the New Kids On The Blockstreet Boys tour and this seems superfluous to me.
[4]

John Seroff: This cartoon blunderbuss of a track recalls Pitbull with its polyglot silliness (Koringrish? Englean?) spiced with nonthreatening machismo, hip hop signifiers and clubbish intention. As with Mr. Worldwide before them, Block B’s knucklehead attitude transcends language. Luckily, the same goes for their overriding amiability.
[7]

Alfred Soto: Go heavy be gone with it, Go heavy be gone with it, Go heavy be gone with it.
[2]

Jer Fairall: Sounding no less ridiculous than the Backstreet Boys or NSync ever did whenever they tried acting tough, these guys at least have the good sense to translate part of their main lyrical hook into literal baby talk, undercutting its posturing with an acknowledgement of its own ludicrousness. At the core, though, is still a soulless, mechanical production straight out of the Max Martin playbook, an aesthetic I’m no closer to understanding the appeal of now than I ever was in its heyday.
[4]

Iain Mew: The crushing synth hook does a lot of the work here through sheer brute force, but Block B and their various inventive different ways of shouting at us and at each other make the most of its potential for fun.
[7]

Frank Kogan: Screeching brakes rain down from the heavens, voices stick out their tongues in mockery, syllables are flung across airwave and Web. Meanwhile, in real life, something’s happening to Block B that’s not translating to my American ears. One member is in the hospital, another has shaved his head in mortification, TV is afraid to show ’em, and all for a minor or nonexistent lack of decorum that doesn’t even come close to the contentiousness this music promises.
[7]

Brad Shoup: Essentially “Sexy and I Know It” without the punchline. That’s good enough for me. Not that this thing doesn’t make its own joke gravy (“I’m a real-time popular searched keyword, bro”), but like damn near anything released by, say, Pitbull, it never challenges its own hubris. Zico’s production settles for a Mr. Worldwide-style klaxon-synth riff and one JB scream; the guys (rarely breaking from the monotone, even in the sung bits) do the major lifting, with weird tangents like “head, shoulders, knees and toes” and, it seems, a reference to the pesticide truck. I’m entirely rewarding the approach, and am hopeful the next single gives me something worth hearing, rather than reading.
[6]

Jonathan Bogart: If we must have boy bands, let them be goofily aggressive and pile weird throat-scraping sounds into the corners of the mix rather than attempt soulful, eye-moistening balladry. This is an entirely selfish stance, of course; none of their ballads are ever aimed at me, whereas their invitations to dance and/or rumble are.
[7]

Imagine an alternate universe in which that Outasight turd was polished perfect, then send us hate mail for even DARING make that analogy…

[Video][Website]
[6.55]

Jer Fairall: The pulsing euphoria of a whole history of anthems for transcendence found on the dance floor, from “I Love The Nightlife” to “Dancing On My Own,” recast as a hopeful introvert’s secret lament. She spins her favourite albums and anticipates another evening spent observing the rituals of the club kids from a wallflower’s distance, longing for the private joy of the sounds coming out of her bedroom speakers to manifest themselves into some kind of communal experience that actually includes her for once. If the song’s neatest trick is presenting all of this under the guise of one of the in-crowd, consider it less a deception than a defence mechanism, and know that those of us who get it hear it all too loud and clear.
[8]

Edward Okulicz: I love Saint Etienne, but “Tonight” is a misfire. Sarah Cracknell sings the song not like someone looking forward to a gig, but rather a woman on death row who’s been given a last night out in Camden in lieu of a last meal. “This could be my life,” she warbles dully, and maybe I’d forgive her, but 20 years ago, she sang “Everyone’s dreaming of all they’ve got to live for/joking around, still digging that sound,” which encapsulated the excitement of living the pop life so much better than this.
[5]

W.B. Swygart: “There’s some nice parts of London/You can see them from here” is one of my favourite pop moments of all time. “Maybe they’ll open with an album track/Or a top 5 hit, no turning back” is not.
[5]

Sabina Tang: By this late date I know to give Saint Etienne singles time and space. The first few listens, I thought the narrator was going on a first date (which she is, of course; just not the kind I was absent-mindedly envisaging), and — saving the stately strings, without which anchor the confection would unmoor in the wind like dandelion floss — the song itself wasn’t doing anything “Burnt Out Car” didn’t do better. (This is still true, to be honest.) Then I played it again this morning, and it moved me to tears, after which, overflowing with emotion, I tried to buy a ticket to that Specials/New Order/Blur Hyde Park gig in August, a real fool’s errand on hotel lobby wireless with a six-hour lag on Greenwich.
[9]

Brad Shoup: I will give in a bit to the spirit. And the top-notch drum programming. Just as the Eli Young Band depict a band’s hopeful spring, Saint Etienne paints the sturdy golden autumn. It’s just a little funny that this song is gonna slay in remix form.
[5]

John Seroff: This sounds old to me, both in the sense that “Tonight” is more of an unpublished outtake of Saint Etienne’s earlier work than a sparkling new track and in that it lacks vitality and necessity. 
[4]

Anthony Easton: Though Saint Etienne makes the argument that it is going-out music, it always struck me as music you put on at dusk, after going out. The dusk/dawn dialectic is strong in their work, and this piece, with a sound that stretches out to all hours, works both against a muddled middle.
[7]

Michaela Drapes: There’s something comforting about the fact that Saint Etienne has, for over half of my lifetime, sounded pretty much just like this. Much in the same way that New Order’s return to form in “Waiting for the Siren’s Call” felt like an old friend popping over for tea to talk about how they’ve got this great job and a comfortable home and a pretty nice life, really — so does this. I ache to throw this on a road trip mixtape and drive on to infinity.
[9]

Alfred Soto: When Sarah Cracknell sings “There’s a part of me only they can’t see/I can hardly wait” she both nails the faint, prim, abashed way in which she has dominated backing tracks for years and incarnates the hopes of every prim, abashed woman who still enjoys a late night at the disco without the dancing part. Who needs assertiveness when you’ve got her cool? The track’s thumpety-thump and ooh-oohed vocals are closer in spirit to the late nineties electro revival, but that’s always been Saint Etienne’s strength: positing the musical rediscovery as a way of looking forward.
[7]

Katherine St Asaph: This is gorgeous. It’s also less like a Saint Etienne track than three-fourths of a Sophie Ellis-Bextor B-side, which can’t be why it’s so gorgeous. I sigh and romanticize my outings and music too, but this call is too puny; someday, my floaty, swooning dance track will come.
[7]

Iain Mew: Saint Etienne’s past career is one of my blind spots, so I can mostly only wonder as to whether they’ve always sounded this much like Kylie. Or at least like her current Radio 2-friendly incarnation. Whoever’s sound it is, it’s a very good one, which Saint Etienne carry off well. The fact that it’s a song about going to a gig on top of that ought to have me falling in love. I’m always a sucker for songs with references to interests which I share in general, and more specifically ones steeped in the love of pop music and its culture (see Art Brut, Hello Saferide, Diddy-Dirty Money and many more besides). Those song all have other things going for them besides, though. “Tonight” wears the cuteness of its wit a lot more prominently than it deserves, and too often presents the fact that it is about going to a gig as being enough in itself. There is one line in the chorus that captures a moment — “I will surrender to the sound and look at all the kids around” I can picture now, head thrown back and arms outstretched in disbelief at the perfectness of what is happening, no longer caring to focus on the stage — but “the sound is breaking like a wave” doesn’t work and the rest of the song rings a bit hollow. It doesn’t help that, unlike its protagonist, I never play a band’s albums before going to their show.
[6]

Not an Aretha cover, nor Akon…

[Video][Website]
[5.70]

Katherine St Asaph: “Hello. We are Nina Sky. You vaguely remember us, correct? Either way, we’ve since listened to chillwave and ‘I’m On One.’ Please blog about us again.”
[7]

Brad Shoup: More like Awesome Percussion ft. Nina Sky.
[4]

Andrew Casillas: It’s a tad disappointing that they follow up their CREEP collaboration by pretending that 2006-2011 never happened, but this kind of lite 2-step/R&B is fine regardless. Nina Sky’s cool, hushed harmonies are still their best asset by far, but hopefully next time they’ll do something a little more forward-thinking musically beyond snap sounds.
[5]

Alfred Soto: Nina Sky remember to exaggerate the importance of tongue clicks, organs, ahh-ahhs, and the kind of beat Ginuwine would have loved in 1997.
[5]

Michaela Drapes: In her impenetrable underground fortress in an undisclosed location, Robyn is concerned.
[8]

Pete Baran: There are two things going on here that sadly do not mesh. Nina Sky sing a pleasant enough song that has too much vocal manipulation in it for me to get a sense of any song coalescing. Which is fine, as the backing’s spare beats and electronic fun ought to make up for it. But it is too sparse: not enough dance to dance to, not enough song to enjoy.
[4]

Jer Fairall: Painstakingly tasteful coffeehouse electronica, spinning through an amiable pattern of shuffles and clicks with pleasing agility, but austere to the point of bloodless and restrained to the point of repression.
[4]

Iain Mew: “Day Dreaming” is appropriately easy to get lost in and drift along with, and it’s exquisite in places. The breaths as percussion are a gorgeous touch, and the title phrase gets stretched and softened and hardened until it takes on a life of its own. Without anything to anchor its drifting, though, it’s also frustratingly inconsequential, more production showcase than song.
[6]

Jonathan Bogart: This has been in regular rotation in my “2012” playlist on my phone, and every time it comes up I struggle to remember which one it is. I want to like Nina Sky, but they keep making it hard.
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John Seroff: A brief discussion broke out on the “King of Hearts” comment thread regarding Cassie’s anonymity and the meaning behind her positive critical consensus: is it because of or in spite of her “blankness”? A litmus test for us Jukeboxers may well be how we respond collectively to a slightly superior cut that skews darker and less disco but also comes with a boatload of personality. “Day Dreaming” is more meaty than “Hearts”, more seductive and expends more productive energy getting to the finish line. I’m confident the record will reflect we chose wisely.
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Usher and Diplo: a collaboration we actually like…

[Video][Website]
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Michaela Drapes: Did you know that Usher uses the name Donny Hathaway when he checks into hotels? Well, he did in 1998, anyway. I laughed at him when I found this out, so I’m saying this now: Usher, dude, your life is kind of a mess, but congratulations on finally earning your stripes. The student has surpassed the master.
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Jonathan Bogart: I know the timeline probably wouldn’t bear this out, but I like to imagine that trying to keep up with Romeo Santos‘s falsetto pushed Ursh back into creamy, ice-cool lovelorn R&B after having spun his wheels on heat-blasted RedOne dance pop. Diplo gives the monochromatic cod-Drake production more throb and pulse than Shebib usually manages, but it’s really all just a worked-up setting for that voice, patient and silken. Comparisons to blog-friendly R&B all fail on the basis that Usher — when he tries — can actually sing.
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Jer Fairall: Usher goes all Abel Tesfaye with a gloomy and nearly minimalist track, but he’s still too much of a gooey romantic to engage in such debauched psychodrama. What is left over is an atmospheric elegance that will probably result in this being one of Usher’s lowest charters, but the small moment in which his voice soars expansively over a subtle bank of New Age-y synths, in particular, points towards an adventurous and, dare I say, mature new direction.
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Alfred Soto: R. Kelly’s Love Letter used the coffee machine percussion and synth washes to similar effect, but Usher’s gifts root this in the present. Unlike so many love men, he achieves the generosity that his prodigious vocal talents reach for. It’s not just his feet that are off the ground. 
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John Seroff: An intro that suggests the “Katy on a Mission” hook announces the presence of veteran beat-jacker Diplo, the ghostly and spare orchestration is pure Nico Muhly and the understated whisper-to-falsetto crooning is unmistakably Usher. It’s a mix of the best of three worlds and they mesh nicely on “Climax”. This is what The Weeknd and the next generation of “Radiohead quietstorm” R&B artists are striving for: cool, vaguely creepy, two steps removed from immediate and deadly effective.
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Andy Hutchins: Usher’s got some Abel Tesfaye going on before the #FuckingDiplo beat takes off near what sort of functions as the hook, though anything set against the strobes-at-midnight synths and rattling, tinny drums is going to sound hook-like, and then the bridge gives everything but, of course, the climax. There is something incredibly satisfying about a song like this that unfurls itself on both bedsheets and dancefloors at once.
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Alex Ostroff: Despite the praise “Climax” will inevitably get from certain quarters for Diplo’s involvement, the most exciting thing about the track for me is just how much it sounds like the Usher of “Burn” and “U Got It Bad.” Since 2008, market forces have pushed Usher in the direction of will.i.am and JaySean Derülo et al. The beat may be slightly more electronic than typical, but the vocals are classic Usher midtempo balladry: smooth falsetto, and emoting that actually evokes feelings instead of merely signifying them. My favourite trick here is that any time the verses or bridge approach a climax — emotional or musical — they are swiftly undercut by the understated chorus cycling through yet again. Illustrating that a relationship has passed its climax by perversely preventing your performance from having one is smart and effective. 
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Edward Okulicz: I’m not the biggest fan of Usher, or Diplo, but it sounds atypical of the latter, and such a good example of something people tell me I don’t hear in the former. It’s classic and modern, and Usher demonstrates his rich adaptability to such an extent, I’m getting a little weak-kneed at the thought.
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Brad Shoup: The lyrical switchbacks are vintage, er, People-What-Work-With-Usher, and all involved are to be commended for not taking the titular conceit on the obvious musical route. The bridge sounds more like worship music (notoriously light on the consummation); the flickers of dubstep and pneumatic synth patter create tension. Good to see he hasn’t stopped revisiting themes of possession and manipulation. Marvin would be proud.
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Katherine St Asaph: “Climax” begs for the most repellent sort of criticism, overpraising it for being neither Top 40 nor straight R&B but closer to The Weeknd or The-Dream and thus “acceptable.” But even recognizing this, the pacing is pure, deliberate seduction, and there’s real craft in Usher’s singing (his delivery of “on my knees” is a come-on so rich and foolproof it’s only to be used sparingly) and how he makes “climax” not a double but triple entendre. November, meet your babies.
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