The Internet says it means, roughly, “move your ass.”

[Video][Website]
[6.75]

Iain Mew: This song has no real chorus to speak of, periodically hops in and out of sounding like La Roux, and has almost no melodic elements that I can actually remember when it’s done. I haven’t made sense of it at all, but I keep on coming back to it, and for a short time at least there is nothing I would rather listen to than shouting “flytta flytta flytta flytta” over manic electro. It helps that it sounds a bit like “I Love It” put through a shredder and thrown back together.
[9]

Katherine St Asaph: Music for our cybernetic future, when we are all high-kicking, ponytailed robots. And when we’ve forgotten about tension and build.
[6]

Will Adams: So much about this – the crunchy electropop, the sing-songy rapping, the rapid fire vocal phrashings – reminds me of Yelle – a specific song, even – that I am required to love this by default. This loses points because I don’t understand Swedish, which isn’t really Alina’s fault. It also loses points because of that annoying bit where she goes “FLYTTA FLYTTA FLYTTA,” which I suppose is a more valid criticism.
[6]

Jonathan Bogart: FLYTTA FLYTTA FLYTTA FLYTTA.
[8]

Brad Shoup: The whole track sounds both pissed- and sawed-off; I imagine someone shadowboxing in a gym closet. Its crusty synth line occasionally sloughs off bonus data, so if you’re sick of your friends yelling about ’90s bitches maybe you can plug this in.
[7]

Anthony Easton: I like to think that the song says, “I want to flip the pony”, which amuses me. Besides that mondegreen, I like the woohoo choruses, and the crunchy basses. The rest I am ambiguous about. 
[6]

Alfred Soto: Boy, does she sound exuberant: girlish in receptivity to emotion, mature in how she switches from chest to head voices when necessary.
[7]

Patrick St. Michel: The music sounds a bit elbow-to-elbow busy, but the singing (especially those “oooooooos”) cuts through the crowd and save this.
[5]

Now the monumental question: [nεt∙skαı] or [nεt∙ski]?

[Video][Website]
[5.38]

Will Adams: Before I listened to this, I asked myself, “How much you wanna bet this is gonna open with some pitch-shifted, reedy soul sample that repeats the title followed by some trance-laden drum ’n’ bass?” On one hand, I don’t believe music should be this predictable. On the other, this makes me want to go running.
[6]

Iain Mew: Forlorn chipmunks and tectonic drum ’n’ bass play off against each other – neither would be  impressive on their own but the effect of equilibrium between the two is pretty neat.
[6]

Alfred Soto: The pitch-accelerated sample is as predictable as humidity in August, so I looked to pleasures where I could find them, mostly in the keyboard department, like the ominous synth patch at the 2:10 mark.
[4]

Anthony Easton: The unicorn and glittery pink cloud instrumental break almost literally ramps into euro-noise and robot ennui, like the fruit layer at the bottom of slightly bitter plain yogurt.
[4]

Katherine St Asaph: Coffeeshop music for coffeeshops that get overrun by neon-faced ravers at 11 p.m. How many niches are even left to soundtrack?
[5]

Patrick St. Michel: There isn’t much here — drum ’n’ bass percussion, some big ol’ synth, an L.T.D. vocal sample — but during the four minutes it plays “Love Has Gone” is an energetic blast.  I’m also sure that, like a lot of this new-fangled EDM stuff, it’s a lot of fun to dance to in a club.
[6]

Brad Shoup: Needs more drum ’n’ bass. Or the portion it has ought to be louder. Less kicking the phrase into a corner, and perhaps the dread synth draping could have been folded in on itself? A leadoff track with a second-half feel.
[5]

Jonathan Bogart: Could have used a MASSIVE DROP to drive the point home, but still a very cheerful and manic two fingers to the slowly crystallizing classiness of drum ’n’ bass. Sugar-rushing preteens running around an oddly deserted Barcelona is exactly the right video for it.
[7]

Nice Instagram filters, Madge…

[Video][Website]
[5.60]

Anthony Easton: Apparently there is a fight in the French media between Jeanne Moreau loyalists (aging naturally as a kind of elegance) and Catherine Deneuve loyalists (using artifice to refuse to age). Since America resists aging at all, there is not a (false?) choice here, just a tumble into obsessively seeking after youth. The interesting thing about Madonna was that for a while she was interested in working out how to include complicated themes in music that was previously all surface — the combination of formal innovation and haunted ideas renewed themselves enough that the listener could be convinced that the world would last forever. Alas, utopias always fall apart, and maybe it’s because she has given up on ballads, but the saddest thing about this is the idea that turning up the radio to provide subversive ideas was last real a decade before Madge’s first single. Aging into denial is something that the two French ladies would never allow.
[4]

Alfred Soto: A highlight from one of her more grotesque albums – she recovers some of her  preternatural avidity – but it’s time she faced facts. Listening too closely to the radio and chasing happenin’ sounds is precisely what’s made her last five years so desultory. 
[5]

Will Adams: I hated MDNA. Scattershot, undeservedly self-indulgent, and devoid of oomph, it caved in on itself from its needy insistence of reminding you who its star was. Not that we couldn’t tell; Madonna’s voice never sounded so anemic. “Turn Up the Radio,” despite literally being Martin Solveig’s leftovers, was one of the few to recognize this weakness and buried it under electro sheen and an unassuming chorus. I try to avoid grading on a curve, but with circumstances this dire I really see no option.
[5]

Edward Okulicz: Has nothing to say, but says it in a pleasantly nagging fashion. One man’s banality is another man’s banger though, I guess.
[6]

Ramzi Awn: Middle of the road is not a good look for Madonna. The opening lyrics to “Turn Up The Radio” do not bode well for the track, a largely half-baked attempt at currency. Madonna’s efforts to streamline her voice almost work but instead produce a tame redux of the spirit of Ray Of Light and the ecstasy of Confessions. Perhaps the problem lies mainly with the lyrics, delivering a mix of self-help reflections and the ever-present DJ shout-out with an impressive lack of fervor. What is most confusing is in fact not Madonna’s voice, but her ear. If this is what turns up the radio in 2012, remind me to stick to Jazz 88.   
[4]

Jer Fairall: Shaking up the system and breaking all the rules may have at one point involved turning up the radio, but for quite a few albums it has mostly just seemed like Madonna’s chief method of finding “new” sounds to hitch her wagon to; the diminishing returns of the last decade of her career (the retro detour of Confessions on a Dance Floor aside) a result of her detachment from underground club culture, or at least her mistaking what she hears coming out of Lourdes’ iPod as the cutting edge she once absorbed so fruitfully. Yet, “Turn Up The Radio” works because Madonna hasn’t sounded this joyous and ebullient on record since who knows when, and however generic its makeup, the song is bright and dizzy, with a knot of a vocal melody introduced late and the game and met by the singer with spirited enthusiasm. It’s about time diminished expectations began working in her favour.
[7]

Colin Small: Madonna somehow mixes her sound with Wiz Khalifa’s, only proving that the Madonna sound is much more distinctive than I previously assumed.
[6]

Katherine St Asaph: Chris Brown got William Orbit’s best tracks. Madonna got “Turn Up The Music” with a sickly smile. No part of this trade is fair.
[5]

Brad Shoup: As a hermetic nugget, a flash-frozen piece of pop, it’s a delight. The placid synth dips and Madonna’s cheery interior monologue make for a peculiar tension: the mental escape velocity needed to shed the weird gravity of cliché. This feels like an ur-text, and if it makes no push for arena-sized release, I’m willing to assume that wasn’t the plan. Or maybe that’s what remixes are for.
[7]

Pete Baran: Radio baiting songs often seem the provenance of artists on their uppers. Recording a track which will get automatic rotation just due to its chorus lyric is a lazy way to get airplay, and almost seems below Madonna to do that. But Madonna has always been a savvy radio artist; she carved out a niche which has always been pop radio friendly as that curve has gone increasingly to dance and stayed ahead or at least abreast of that curve. So “Turn Up The Radio” is not remarkable by any stretch of Madonna’s career, but it does feel nicely comfortable, its the sound of an artist who knows how to do this stuff not overstretching herself. And sometimes it’s nice to relax, kick back and let the radio do all the work.
[7]

Congratulations, Patrick! You win the day’s contrarian medal! Your prize is a Wonder Girls metaphor.

[Video][Website]
[3.88]

Andy Hutchins: When K-pop lops off the glorious weirdness that makes most batshit K-pop great and trades it in for the cheap sentimentality of love equaling material gains, then adds Akon phoning in a six-digit feature (so named both for consultant’s fee and the fact that it’s a little short of the full thing), you get this.
[4]

Katherine St Asaph: The Wonder Girls are breaking the States the way you feared they would: making themselves anonymous for a hypothetical-or-not U.S. audience that can’t process K-pop without clicking LOL or WTF afterward. Akon sounds like he composed the track and his verse three years ago in a FutureMe email.
[2]

Jonathan Bogart: Generic, anonymizing bosh is maybe the safest possible format for anyone attempting to crack the current US pop market. Which is fine: safety first, and so forth. Akon, unfortunately, is far from a safe thing these days — 2007 was a long time ago — and is outshone in interpolated parts by Yenny’s rap.
[6]

Brad Shoup: I know Wonder Girls are trying to break Stateside, but listening to Akon’s global mercenary work makes me think of A.I. languishing in a Turkish basketball league. Oh Akon, what happened?
[3]

Iain Mew: For their English-language career, Wonder Girls appear to be accepting only songs with lyrical conceits so ridiculous that no one would touch them without having a career in a different language to fall back on.
[2]

Anthony Easton: Love you like an abstract concept that makes the distribution of goods and services easier? Usually the only things that are purchased like money are whores or slaves.
[3]

Will Adams: Every time I hear yet another sub-RedOne (RedZero?) track I’m reminded more and more of a TV dinner that is still half frozen after being popped out of the microwave — whether you throw it out or put it back in, it’s a chore that has little payoff. Even worse is the Wonder Girls’ request to love them like inanimate objects, which grosses me out on several levels, namely that it means the message’s target is shallow enough to love cars more than human beings. Also: “love me up close, love me from afar”? What is this, the Hokey Pokey?
[2]

Patrick St. Michel: Wonder Girls know us better than we do. How no Western pop, rap, R&B or country star thought of the simple-yet-smart line “love me like money” leaves me a bit stunned. The “featuring Akon” gives it away, but “Like Money” is Wonder Girls’ biggest stab at breaking into Western — particularly American — markets, and in the process they’ve somehow hit at a major facet of our contemporary culture. I’ve seen a few message boards and comment sections, ones with pretty anti-K-pop stances, accuse this song of misogyny, of reducing women to objects. Trick is, Wonder Girls just want you to love them as much as you love currency, a car or a “fresh new haircut.” Intentionally or not, “Like Money” captures the West’s material obsession in one great line and then tries to sell it right back to them.
[9]

In which the Jukebox declines to kill the hype…

[Video][Website]
[7.11]

Patrick St. Michel: Gil Scott-Heron’s lonely beat from “New York Is Killing Me” gets repurposed as a minimal backdrop for Angel Haze to declare her rap-game supremacy while threatening to tie a bungee cord around your neck and kick you off a ledge. The sparseness makes her proclamations all that much more clear, while also giving her ample space to show off her flow.
[8]

Andy Hutchins: The thing that distinguishes tracks like “New York” from the covers of instrumentals she’s done for years is that she knows where she’s going and gets there now. Over this squiggly bit of nu-bap, you can hear it: “I killed this shit, this the motherfuckin’ requiem” is a tremendous dismount of a verse, and it’s the first one. After she double-times through the first bit of the third one, that “I run New Yawk” that echoes in the hook sounds like a statement of fact. But she could still work on the breath control.
[8]

Alfred Soto: Confirmation that she’s not as dirty as she seems came around the two-minute mark when her voice asserted itself as the powdery bourgy Brooklyn thing it is. “I am whatever they say I am” is an empty threat, though.  
[6]

Will Adams: Angel Haze rides the bare-bones production like she’s been doing this her whole life, but the music may be too spare to fully convince me that she runs New York.
[7]

Brad Shoup: Has “I run New York” ever been stated so meekly? The 83rd hail from Chicago, so maybe things back home are done with a bit more insinuation. I’m sure it’d be hard to sound bad over the wet handclaps and sneaky-melodic bass, but did the same person who used the Crusades for shade settle for a stale Mortal Kombat reference? The triple-time verse is a decent parlor trick, but I was already interested.
[7]

Iain Mew: I love her rapping style and lines about elliptical orbits and the stripped back beat with big thwacks of bass. The Mortal Kombat reference doesn’t hurt any, either. I also love that it’s a rap track with singing on where it doesn’t seem like a tacked-on extra but something that evolves dynamically out of the verses, as it’s just the better way to present what she wants to.
[8]

Anthony Easton: Aggressive, with excellent finger snaps and some lines that are both interesting and almost genuinely shocking (especially the slave reference, which might cause more offense than the Down syndrome reference she doesn’t apologize for.) Better flow than Minaj, and she knows her heritage includes Kim. But we have heard this before. 
[6]

Katherine St Asaph: She doesn’t run New York (if so, I’ve got a list of grievances, beginning with the weather and ending far later than it should.) She can run a handclap beat, though. That’s a start.
[7]

Jonathan Bogart: A hip-hop claim to running New York has nothing to do with actual power, influence or even awareness, and everything to do with a “The Secret”-type visualization: say it enough times, and it’ll become true.
[7]

Close your eyes, spread your arms wide and concentrate, and feel the distant wrath of Green Day fans…

[Video][Website]
[2.88]

Edward Okulicz: If 21st Century Breakdown was Green Day’s attempt to recapture the success and scope of the wildly overrated American Idiot, this points to a reversion to the excellent and unsung Warning, only with a bit of theatrical grandeur put in because they’ve earned it. Only instead of being punchy and pithy, and stealing from folk, punk and pop with a sharp chorus and good ideas, “Oh Love” wears out its welcome as soon as you realise that it’s got one riff, one “hook” and one idea and is very, very long. I thought people listened to Green Day so they wouldn’t have to listen to this sort of dross.
[2]

Alfred Soto: “Don’t stop. Don’t stop,” Billy Joe reminds himself at the start of this five-minute turgidity. It works.
[2]

Brad Shoup: Five fucking minutes! That’s nearly ten Ballads of Barton Fink! Was this improvised? Does “back to basics” really mean your 6th grade rhythm guitar lessons?
[2]

Iain Mew: Green Day do The Decemberists is not an appealing prospect. The results do at least turn out to be more dull than horrible, particularly the verses which are one drawn out holding pattern.
[4]

Will Adams: Lurches along stridently until it spills out into a chorus that is pure theatre. Billie Joe Armstrong’s thin voice is more suited to punky posturing than scenery chewing. American Idiot split the difference the best, whereas “Oh Love” falls squarely into the latter.
[4]

Anthony Easton: When did Green Day turn into late ’70s bar rock? Was it all that Broadway money?
[3]

Patrick St. Michel: I’m giving this an extra point because it will serve as the last song on the band’s forthcoming album, which leaves some hope that Green Day will somehow revert to their ’90s selves and the songs before “Oh Love” will be some great pop-punk. Unfortunately, now I know the album will end on a completely meandering note that sounds like middle-aged men trying to write about being a teenager except making the whole experience sound dull.
[2]

Jonathan Bogart: Everyone turns into their parents.
[4]

Not quite what it sounds like…

[Video][Website]
[6.14]

Anthony Easton: The question of congregationalism and personal relationships to Jesus have been flummoxing American protestants since Jonathan Edwards, and this Jesus save me song, does not really begin to solve them. What I love about it, is that it has all of the sleazy details–the suicide, the blinking light, the cheap motel room, the loneliness and isolation that read like erotic desperation–even that ultimate cheating line: “he met her in a motel room”–and then turns her heel on the whole mess. She didn’t mean an anonymous lover in a motel room, she renewed her commitment to faith, and that renewed commitment delivered her. There is something profound in the sinner’s prayer aspect of this, the rock bottom baptist, who ends up being saved by the sentimental tropes of country music. Recursive, heart breaking, and mystical, in a white trash, working class sort of way. Way smarter than it has any right to be. 
[9]

Brad Shoup: Is it awful or trite that my definitive Gideon Bible song is still “Rocky Raccoon”? I don’t doubt that Sebastian’s tale has real roots, but there’s something about the flippancy with which fleabag motels are booked that lends itself well to the idle flipping of the Good Word. Strange that the crying violin seems to testify loudest.
[5]

Jonathan Bogart: Well done to a televised singing-competition performer attempting a first single with some moral ambiguity to it, but the usual sentimental backing exerts a gravitational force that turns it into one more thing to walk down the aisle to.
[4]

Patrick St. Michel: Certainly did not expect a born-again-Christian number based on the title, but that’s exactly what Gwen Sebastian wants with a song name like that and the first verse which doesn’t really reveal what’s going until the chorus gives it away.  Musically, this is pretty content to slowly unfold and nothing more, but Sebastian’s simple lyrics do the hard work anyways.  The fact she avoids a big, revelatory climax in favor of understated observations is a nice touch.
[6]

Iain Mew: My favourite things about this song, in ascending order of importance: 1) The degree to which it reminds me of (self-described country singer) Hello Saferide; 2) The gorgeous way that the strings wend through it, and that Gwen sings with restraint but certainty to match; 3) Its superb handling of its narrative, where all of the emphasis is on the desperate circumstances and not on the revelation and conversion because there would be no way to make that sound adequate. Yet even as she’s singing that “no choir sang a sweet forgiveness tune” she’s still planting an idea of that choir and perfect words, and a feeling that whatever unknown did happen was still every bit their equal.
[8]

Will Adams: I’m not that familiar with country (working on it!), but I can tell that this staring-at-the-ice-at-the-bottom-of-your-glass-at-2AM ballad is a staple in the genre. It’s understated and competently performed, not something I’d actively seek out again but pleasant enough for driving alone with the radio turned up halfway. I do like the sustained chord outro; paired with the soft fade, it’s really the right, and only, way to end an endeavor this modest.
[5]

Alfred Soto: Let’s give this shrewdie credit: she pulls off the year’s best bait and switch. She sings credibly too; she knows not to push the bathetic images of Gideon bibles and churches. On the other hand she, like Kellie Pickler, does much better when suggesting – if not reveling – in sin. 
[6]

Hong Kong hip-hop. 你識唔識聽廣東話?

[Video][Website]
[4.83]

Jonathan Bogart: The thin knockoff of the “Float On” guitar sample that underpins this Hong Kong hip-hop song is a pretty good metonym for the song as a whole: the best things about it are borrowed from either US or Korean originals. C-Kwan and 6-Wing are perfectly fine rappers — the percussive phonemes of Cantonese don’t hurt — but they slip into gooey inspiration-hawking far more easily than these rock & roll-bred ears are comfortable with.
[5]

Patrick St. Michel: FAMA seem to be one of the most popular groups in the Hong Kong hip-hop scene, and also one of the most influential. It’s a shame that this song has to be my introduction to them, because this and its sub-Soulja-Boy-song synths just come off as gratingly peppy, the whole track like a carefully coordinated group hug. 
[2]

Iain Mew: Knowing nothing about them, my initial favourite part of listening to this was the ridiculous soft focus keyboard intro turning out to be a fakeout for some sprightly hip-hop. As a sometime peruser of the Hong Kong charts, I took this as satire at the expense of the ballads that make up a great deal of them. Thinking about it more, though, the fact that the song is so uplifting owes as much to a genuine seeming appreciation of the cheesy as it does to the bubbly arrangement and rapping. Without the crooned singing sections, key change and communal chanting at the end it wouldn’t have such an impact.
[7]

Brad Shoup: Google Translate was no friend this time (unless they’re actually saying “Seems that they want to ban the generous system of microphone management” — if yes, TEN). So the impression I’ve got is a nakedly inspirational, lurching little pop-rap number (hell, it’s practically a sea shanty), lots of chunking on-beat syllables and suspiciously familiar sampled guitar runs. It’s essentially all chorus, making the Kinkadian key change a feature instead of a bug.
[8]

Anthony Easton: The lullaby sweetness of the first few seconds is genuinely lovely, it sort of collapses after that. 
[4]

Will Adams: No. You aren’t allowed to present me with what sounds like the end theme of an N64 game and make me prepare for a saccharine ballad only to fake me out and give me dope-faced saccharine rap. Nor are you allowed to employ an “inspirational” brass section and make it sound as depressed as Eeyore. Sorry if that sounds unfair, but if you’re trying to get me to sway along to your namby-pamby uplift you have to play by my rules.
[3]

Gangnam style = dancing with horses?

[Video][Website]
[5.25]

Patrick St. Michel: Right now, I can look up the most popular songs in Japan or Korea and then find several English translations of said track floating around online. Entire internet sub-cultures exist around the shared idea of translating foreign song lyrics into their native tongue and sharing them online, a way for international fans to feel more connected with groups they can’t understand. The best music, though, should sound so good on its own that knowing what the lyrics are about should be a secondary concern. I had no clue what Psy sang about on “Gangnam Style” going into it, and the English translation I pulled up only befuddles me more. Yet I know exactly what Psy is going for here, because the music (and the video) spells it out perfectly. This guy wants to have ridiculous amounts of fun.  The music is an alternate-reality version of 2NE1’s “I Am The Best,” except with that one’s WWE attitude swapped out for a booze-soaked banger, with the vocals delivered in this gruff voice that signals good times. And vocal earworms like the titular phrase and the “Ehhhh, sexy lady” bits sound great without any Rosetta Stone assistance. Dumb fun crosses all linguistic lines.
[8]

Jonathan Bogart: His ko.wikipedia page notes that he’s a day younger than I am, which is a cheerful thought. He’s also apparently had a music career since 1999, and was busted for pot in 2001. “Gangnam Style,” based purely on the video, is a laff riot-cum-bosh party à la “Sexy and I Know It” — or perhaps “I’m Too Sexy.” I’ll tread cautiously around the question of whether it’s actually funny — there’s a long history in Western entertainment of East Asian men being caricatured as buffoonishly unsexy, and I’m not interested in perpetuating that — but his energy and commitment are never in doubt, and that sideways-waddle dance is as athletic as it is goofy-looking. Oh, the music? You’ve heard LMFAO, right?
[8]

Iain Mew: The video suggests that he’s something like a Korean LMFAO (chubby male body presented as inherently comedic is not exactly a big step up from all male bodies being presented as inherently comedic, though some of that perception that that’s what’s happening may be male gaze at my end I suppose). I love the song, though. It’s fun, but at the same time he displays a technical care and commitment in the verses that belies the visual lack of seriousness. Musically he combines some the best bits of sounds shared with YG Entertainment labelmates to great effect. The electro grind is prime 2NE1 and the stop-start spoken bits that turn the song into a series of different builds and releases is similar to Big Bang’s “Fantastic Baby”, only in “Gangnam Style” the beats come back in in a myriad of different and increasingly enjoyable ways each time.
[9]

Will Adams: See what happens when you let LMFAO get too popular? Clones start popping up all over the world. Let’s do better next time, America.
[2]

John Seroff: “Gangnam Style” wilds out somewhere in that super-sweet spot between video game soundtrack, house and peak spin class workout. The bass is bouncing; the gleefully declamatory vocals put Pitbull to shame. It’s all just somehow skirting a bad headache somehow. The gleefully batshit music video is icing on the icing.
[8]

Katherine St Asaph: Video’s a [10]; it’s got explosions within minute one, guys. We are rating the song, however, which is what you’d get if “Starships” sounded even more like a Jock Jam. You can mute the video; you can’t augment the song.
[3]

Alfred Soto: By itself the song is LMFAO-influenced froth; the video, though, makes the Conrad novel title Under Western Eyes ever more fraught.
[2]

Brad Shoup: As this south-of-the-river boy understands it, Psy’s aiming a silo-sized seltzer bottle at the K-pop firmament. Problem is, he hit Benny Benassi, who’s already plenty soggy. Psy sounds a bit like David Bowie on the cinematic middle eight, but that’s not enough to make this intriguing as a sonic high concept. I’m receiving that part as sincere, though, which is about the only defense I got.
[2]

First time we’ve covered him since 2009… we liked him better then…

[Video][Website]
[4.50]

Iain Mew: I’ve never got into Richard Hawley before, but I love a couple of songs on his new album (“Standing at the Sky’s Edge” and “Seek It” and “Before”), which are rich with wit and mystery and some awesome guitar playing. This is not one of those songs. I think the chief problem is that everything is covered in fuzz, but it’s not even particularly great fuzz, and from what I can make out of the narrative it doesn’t feel worth fishing around that much for more. It also stops the solo from standing out — on the best songs they unfold unexpectedly and with dramatic new emotions, but here it just intensifies the fuzz a bit.
[4]

Anthony Easton: Following him down to the woods probably wouldn’t be filled with the uncanny Crowleyan magic he’s aiming for but rather a dullness with someone who cares deeply about what computers can do for rock and roll, man. Might have worked better with an acoustic and the track pitched a bit lower.
[5]

Brad Shoup: I just can’t hack this kind of psychedelic sawgrass.
[4]

Jonathan Bogart: Psychedelic rock has never sounded so exhausted.
[2]

Patrick St. Michel: The first minute and a half of this is an attempt to be “psychedelic” without any trippy returns. Thankfully, it kicks in shortly after, as Hawley’s voice undergoes some weird touches and the music turns to a hypnotic crawl. What follows justifies all the mismatched colors found in the music video.
[6]

Mallory O’Donnell: Great tune, horribly compressed, weak lyric, powerful arrangement, tentative production, outstanding playing, retro in a cool way, retro in an uncool way. Everything about “Down in the Woods” is push-and-pull, back and forth and I can’t quite commit to it the way it can’t quite commit to me. But I keep coming back for more, like there’s some kind of secret down there, down in the woods…
[7]

Edward Okulicz: I really thought Hawley’s rich voice, surprisingly wide emotional palette and skill with songs of all kinds could make me listen to him doing anything. Until he decided to go washed-out psychedelia in lieu of the aforementioned richness and skill, that is.
[5]

Alfred Soto: I’m not sure who he thinks he’s fooling with those vocal filters. Judging by the lyrics and those power chords, maybe he’s smarter than the rest of us.
[3]