Allie X in 2011, not on her score today but not not: “If you like German, es wird groß sein.”

[Video][Website]
[6.57]

Katherine St Asaph: We live in interesting pop times, where a rising starlet’s intentionally context-free debut single can be co-signed by both Pitchfork and Katy Perry’s Twitter within weeks. That missing context: she’s a Torontonian singer with infinite Torontonian band gigs and, solo, one prior (great) synth-pop incarnation as ALX that’s still on Vimeo and a self-titled EP that’s not on her Myspace, because her Myspace is gone, but can be found piecemeal on YouTube. (One track, “Damaged Nail,” is like a cross between Agnete Kjølsrud’s “Get Jinxed” and Kate Bush’s “Violin.” I love it.) Unsurprisingly, each iteration’s made Allie slicker; “Catch” settles her voice into a po-faced Ellie Goulding sound and her synthpop into a CHVRCH-ified “Paper Planes.” But slicker is not worse. That pause in “catch my… breath” is the slickest trick in the book, and I love it too.
[7]

Patrick St. Michel: “OK, your diagnosis came back and everything looks mostly alright, but just to be safe I want you to take something called CHVRCHES for a while, it will have you feeling 100 percent in no time. What’s that? Yeah, yeah, that stuff can get expensive — look, I can also recommend this off-brand stuff they sell over the counter. It isn’t nearly as effective, but it will do in a pinch.”
[4]

Alfred Soto: When I get tired of vocals manipulated on keyboards cushioned by “live” harmonies, I’ll let you know. Each repetition of the chorus increases the tension, bit by bit — a shrewder and un-yucky correlative for the love-is-a-drug bullshit.
[7]

Iain Mew: It’s frustrating that “Catch” has some of the most horrible love-as-a-drug verses around. It doesn’t even carry through on them, and “wait until I catch my breath” is a much better fit for the ebullience with which the track spins and dances along its neon path.
[7]

Scott Mildenhall: Yes, there are similarities to Chvrches in the production, but is it not unusual for a Torontonian to sound Scottish when singing? Allie X sounds like the secret lovechild of a Proclaimer and Cher Lloyd (NB not a thing that has happened), but sadly lacks the big hooks of their best moments. With a stronger chorus, more distinct from the rest of the song, this could be improved.
[6]

Brad Shoup: Lots of neat vocal touches here: she’s got a great upper register; her harmonies could be coming from an exhaling tea kettle. The verses are so twitchy (filled with Elliott Smith-levels of doctor/soldier/drug imagery), but we’re denied a full freakout. Just those neat harmonies and a fake plea for patience that sounds dangerously real.
[7]

Edward Okulicz: So this is basically Sophie Ellis-Bextor’s magnificent “The Distance Between Us” with some creepy drug metaphors and a gauzier chorus. Neither of those two things are improvements, but they’re not negatives either.
[8]

Ask.com, on not blinking: “There is not an official record on file with Guinness World Records for not blinking. There are plenty of other records like world’s largest cucumber at 47 inches.”

[Video]
[3.58]

Megan Harrington: I have always considered Cascada a monolith, so it’s extremely disorienting to learn Cascada is one woman (at least, aesthetically Cascada is one woman). The monolith worked in their favor; all their hits are B-movie takes on clubbing where your night out devolves in a whirlwind of disease and body horror. “Blink” is no exception: years spent awake? I hope this song isn’t an ancient ethnic curse and everyone who listens to it risks death with every disco nap. IT x The Ring x Doctor Who (the x’s are where the drop goes). I hope my cat eats my corpse, at least. 
[6]

Scott Mildenhall: Still on a Clubland tour of the north west in spirit if not reality, and the world is all the better for it. Amid the haze of “Clarity” there are even slightly trancey elements, bringing this firmly into Dave Pearce territory. Like the Liz song, it’s a competent compound of sounds familiar from several separate places; added to being a cover, peak Cascada.
[7]

Alfred Soto: Because if she blinks she falls asleep.
[1]

Patrick St. Michel: Stop this war on sleep already.
[3]

Will Adams: “Blink” starts out anonymously enough but soon dives into a chorus that is unmistakably an attempt to swipe the current Zedd pound. Cascada’s track record for blatant ripoffs stretches back to 2009, when they repeatedly and relentlessly chased the RedOne-Gaga sound. They would go on to mash up “California Gurls” with another popular dance hit and, later, compete in Eurovision with a song that was just a rewrite of last year’s winner. Copycatting is nothing new to pop, but the failure of Cascada is that they always give their retreads lyrics that are, in equal measure, empty and stupid. “Evacuate the Dancefloor” literally asks you to leave the club, and “San Francisco” throws all possible references to the city at the wall to see what sticks. On “Blink,” Natalie Horler bellows on and on about not wanting to ever blink ever, and it’s exhausting. I’ll take the sleep, thank you.
[1]

Katherine St Asaph: Cascada never went away; they’re still that inexplicably popular, long-lasting wart on the underbelly of EDM. Someone should make a list, fill out some parentheticals, of everyone they ripped off (Zedd), helped ruin (RedOne, Maggie Reilly), or stomped on (all these people, all you readers). That sounds like a mixed metaphor. It is not. Cascada is a wart that rips, ruins and stomps.
[0]

Brad Shoup: “Everytime We Touch” was like, 60% drums. God, what a great song that was. It didn’t sound like a Disney alum drowning off the coast of Sweden at all.
[4]

Edward Okulicz: Nat Horler has exactly two singing modes — on and off — which is one more trick in her arsenal than most of Cascada’s tracks.
[4]

Anthony Easton: Natalie Horler’s voice has outrageous power — saying nothing, but saying it with a full thunderstorm of emotion. But all of the metaphors fall apart, and this becomes an act of precise formalism and genre tiredness. It’s not even interesting as camp or bad taste. 
[6]

Iain Mew: Blaring beats as insistent as the person telling you that you have to have another drink; missing out and even sleep cast as a terror worse than Weeping Angels. This sounds more like a parody of YOLO than The Lonely Island managed, and it’s horrifying.
[2]

David Sheffieck: There’s no escaping “Blink”: it will take its hooks, it will hammer them into you, and by the end a vocal hook you thought was mediocre will have taken up permanent residence in your brain, with the half-dozen other hooks lodged just slightly below it. It’s not subtle about anything, but it’s determined as hell to win you over, right down to a fadeout that feeds perfectly back to the intro. Go on, give in, click play again. Your will is no longer your own.
[8]

Daniel Montesinos-Donaghy: GET IN THE BIN
[1]

Liz, on naming: “A lot of times people will have a name.”

[Video][Website]
[5.56]

Katherine St Asaph: Liz is LA-adjacent and blonde enough to have been in the industry since age 13 making actual teenpop, none of which emerged. (I kind of want it to.) Now she makes teenpop simulacra — not Melissa Lefton-style parodies, but the kind that’s serious like Coke campaigns are serious, designed and micromanaged to come off simultaneously as trendy-alternative enough for tastemakers (now spare a blog post for Sophia Black) and mainstream-faithful enough to massage millennials’ memories of pop-R&B crossover, rebranded by Liz and label (Jeffree’s, of Diplo’s Mad Decent) as “Y2K R&B pop.” More so than usual, you can tell how everything, concept down to production twitches and fashion accessories, was “curated,” i.e. chosen specifically to play on nostalgia. Her last EP is called Just Like You! She wears weird camouflage shit, just like you did! She’s got an anachronistic and sometimes really anachronistic techy aesthetic, just like you… did? (This is what Google actually looked like in 2000. As for lizy2k.com, if it were truly Y2K it wouldn’t load so slow.) She wears FUBU, just like… see, the thing with Liz, and often with Mad Decent in general, is that to like her you’ve got to ignore a lot of appropriation. (First thing to ignore is her press bio, where you learn that someone wrote the phrase “tasteful post-ratchet lollipop sounds,” that the producers were writing intentional kitsch, and that the flack couldn’t even finish the thing. I take it back, Lena Fayre’s publicist; this = worst. Second thing to ignore is that her label did “Harlem Shake,” which is not the Harlem Shake. You may notice a lack of ignoring here.) So much branding work! And all for what amounts to a Craig David song with a dick joke (and house piano and “Vogue” drums and Xtina melodies — this is historically playful, not historically faithful.) Forget post-Y2K, call this post-Facebook: easy to Like, difficult to like.
[6]

Patrick St. Michel: “While channeling the guilty pleasure of throwback Brandy, Mariah and Destiny’s Child…” is a terrible way to start any conversation, let alone an official artist description. Still, let’s give Liz the benefit of the doubt on “All Them Boys,” because this is trend-biting at its hoppiest: R&B meets Disclosure’s UK garage revival buffered out with a late-track Jersey Club taste (those bed squeaks). It sounds bouncy enough, but the fixation on so many different styles leads to none being fleshed out.
[5]

Iain Mew: I enjoy that amid all the different dance music styles “All Them Boys” draws upon, its UK garage elements include its own sproingy version of “Craig David all over your *boink*”. That’s the most memorable thing about it.
[5]

Crystal Leww: The only thing that isn’t delightful is the creaky bedspring beat that appears in the bridge, but we can always blame Wale for that.
[7]

Brad Shoup: Finally, a bedspring sound I like! It’s the syncopation, the speed. This feels like the photonegative of a banger, like one of those skippy mid-’90s Janet Jackson video hits.
[6]

Scott Mildenhall: Such floaty vocals feel incongruous in this setting. Shouldn’t it have a man shouting something like “1990s! Time for the guru,” or a woman bellowing something like “we’re having meatballs”? It’s like a blogbusting collaboration from a universe alternate to this one of Rodgers and Smith; between Black Box, Disclosure Tribute Players and Ariana Grande.
[7]

Alfred Soto: Recent tracks by Akdong Musician and Elliphant have played with genre with the quiet surprises expected of unassuming virtuosos. This is merely generic.
[4]

Daniel Montesinos-Donaghy: The cover to Liz’s Just Like You EP shows the singer standing in front of a Google image search with aliens, unicorns, roses — all the familiar ephemera of the glitchy and oceanic-obsessed cutesiness of Internet weirdness. “All Them Boys” is an assemblage of ’90s girl group R&B, Twice As Nice two-step compilation mixes, Disneyfied wide-eyed teen love and ex-Disney awkward teenromp raunch. It’s catchy enough, if serviceable, but tiring in how much it wants to feel like a Tumblr wall come to life, stitching together zany net-signifiers into three minutes of batted eyelids and flexing Twitter followers. It’s an emoji wall acting as a song, and I’m ready to run into the ocean to get the hell away from this cutesy cool-chasing technological influx.
[2]

Megan Harrington: A Liz song is always an exchange where a friend tells you they like an embarrassing piece of pop culture (My Little Pony, Dungeons and Dragons, Pizza Hut) and you laugh at them like they’re joking. Then they insist they’re serious and you quietly agree that you like it too. You still feel embarrassed by your perceived shitty taste, plus you feel guilty for foisting that shame on your friend. Liz is just making ’90s throwback R&B and dancing awkwardly in her music videos. It’s nothing to stress over. 
[8]

Our second podcast comes four weeks after our first due to running our 5-year anniversary feature last in the slot. But we’re here and we’re talking about the relentless campaign to make Rita Ora into A Thing, Ed Sheeran, the music of the FIFA World Cup, and the homogenization of EDM in pop. Your hosts are Will Adams and Scott Mildenhall.

Download it here (MP3, 0:34:16, 18.8 Mb)

A higher quality version (MP3, 39.7 Mb) can be downloaded from the following mirror: [Sendspace]

Apple doesn’t seem to want to feature us in the Store, but we’re working on it. In the meantime, this link should enable you to subscribe to us via RSS in iTunes:
http://www.thesinglesjukebox.com/?cat=211&feed=rss

Here’s what we played and talked about:

WILL NOT BE TELEVULZERITED…

[Video][Website]
[5.00]Katherine St Asaph: Elliphant is Yet Another Swedish Indie-Synthpop Artist that I keep making us cover, has been a Yet Another for a while now (like so many), and like so many stumbles across a compelling sound eventually. This is that sound, or more accurately a combo of sounds: Songs That Sound Like “Dissolved Girl” (RIYL: the middle of The Future’s Void), Sounds That Sound Like “Ring the Alarm” (RIYL: airhorns, all the airhorns) and Songs That Sound Like Trap (RIYL: trap??? Also this, featuring Skrillex, who seems to have a thing for Ellies.) Caveats: disregard the patois, disregard the talk of revolution.
[7]

Iain Mew: So, like, ska, plus revolutionary shouting, plus drops? It’s an intriguing idea. The thing is that those are three different things which all suggest energy, but in practice they all get lost within a uniform murk that’s spread across the song.
[5]

Alfred Soto: This electrodub and EDM-riding amalgam boasts enough curls and twists and earbending effects that it’s guaranteed to keep me returning. Here’s yet another example of eschewing generalizations about what kinds of music cultures make and appreciate.
[6]

Daniel Montesinos-Donaghy: Someone get this girl in a room with CL already and strike the faux-revolution signifiers from the record: arresting sonics and a sneer but without a face. Posturing’s fine — shit, run with the okayish (?) revolutionary angle but where we have clued-in dancehall storms that sound like wars, Elliphant seems mousy.
[6]

Brad Shoup: No blood is being drawn from dubstep’s stone. The shouty vocals ought to have been treated with some level of invention. But the title’s doing all the (dirty) work.
[4]

Patrick St. Michel: Really revolutionary, brostep.
[2]

Do you even know who Rae Morris is? She doesn’t have a Wikipedia. I have no idea if Harry Potter is in any of her videos…

[Video][Website]
[6.83]Anthony Easton: Where does she get that brown leather Wassily chair, and the brown carpet/bricks to match it? Also is there anything interesting left to say about tennis at night? Also, if she keeps laying on the banister like that, she might fall off. Oh, I’m supposed to be reviewing the song. The bubbling synths are as tired as the percussion. The vocals have that weird-for-weird’s-sake quality that seem very carefully studied (Newsom, Lorde, Patrick Wolf, et al). This will get discussion on all the right blogs, using words like unique or ethereal or beautiful or new, but it has been done before; even the angels must be grounded, pretty fades, and banal is forever.
[3]

Katherine St Asaph: Ariel Rechtshaid and wallflower ascendant discover the sublime.
[9]

Alfred Soto: Credit Ariel Rechtshaid for the buoyant, twinkling electronics, but praise Rae Morris for singing from an ionosphere of desire and trembling.
[7]

David Sheffieck: Subtle and shapeshifting, the production is an ideal complement for Morris’s vocal, which becomes by turns throaty, longing, ethereal. It’s almost too mannered to leave a strong impression, but manages to find a sort of quiet power in the way every element glides along in sync.
[7]

Scott Mildenhall: Most of the lyrics here feel apocryphal in ways that seem unintentional as often as intentional (the tenses and pronouns are all over the shop), but when the chorus arrives, and the gloom departs for a drop down to the barest of backings, Morris looks you/herself in the eye, and there’s the clarity of the kind of direct questioning that’s already sure of its answer.
[7]

Will Adams: This is a song about a narrator unfurling for what may be the first time. The opening, abrasive bassline plucks in half-steps, implying an ominous chord progression of tonic minor-to-Neapolitan. But then, more instruments enter to recontextualize the progression as a warmer, more familiar iii-IV pattern. From then, the song takes off, opening up like someone breaking the surface of a deep pool. “Do you even know that I keep everything in?” asks Rae in the chorus. The question seems foolish at first — if she keeps everything in, of course you wouldn’t know — but soon becomes amazing when it’s clear that the song is meant to be that confession, that poured heart, that catharsis. Here’s one for the introverts who hope for that same courage.
[8]

They’ve got Harry Potter in a video…

[Video][Website]
[7.17]Katherine St Asaph: It Happened To Me: I nearly got hit by a car at 96th and Broadway listening to “Complete Surrender.” (To be fair, nearly being hit by a car on 96th and Broadway is so regular an occurrence they’ve literally stationed crossing guards.) The song made me do it (she said, in the ER) — it rewards immersion, as for what I gather is Slow Club’s sudden pop play, the details are refreshingly un-obvious. The drum intro lasts half a bar too long, heightening the anticipation. The verses are understated and gloomy in that ABBA-verse way, yet still accommodate percussion that trembles and melodies that luxuriate. There’s a naff not entirely on-key bridge that shouldn’t work but somehow thanks to melodrama does. The breathless chorus actually sounds breathless, bursting with strings and sighs and more strings and ever-higher notes while singing about hiding it all. I am perhaps too biased to review this, as my brain lately is little more than a device to replay that chorus. That do-re-mi-fa violin pattern is how I imagine life’s yearningest moments sound inside of it; the rest of life’s moments just exist until it sounds like that again.
[9]

Alfred Soto: Well, this is just fabulous. A jittery percussion loop and echoed vocals, you say? Ick. But Rebecca Watson’s hook won’t quit, and neither will the bongos. It’s as if the duo were already begging for their own Fleetwood Mac Balearic remix.
[8]

Anthony Easton: Rebecca Taylor’s drumming is precise and dedicated. I am a sucker for the slightly slurred, slightly off-note English vocals that Charles Watson displays. I do not like the squeak of Taylor’s voice. I do not like that they spend so much time here trying to work out something longer and more complex. I would have been happy with a 4/4 skiffle beat and his voice a shade more grunting.
[5]

Will Adams: The music is brilliant, stacking hooks like nobody’s business and swelling into an orchestral finish. The vocalists, on the other hand, spend a lot of time playing catch-up, one handing the mic over to the other as if to recuperate.
[6]

Daniel Montesinos-Donaghy: Imagine this dog without bells’n’whistles and you maybe have a husky tribute to lost and failed loves; with them, it’s a Technicolour gamble, with indie singers turned into scorned sirens and multi-instrumentalists turned into lushly-dressed sets. This is drama for the sake of drama — a little emotional restraint for much of the song leaves it from reaching its probable peak — but it’s pretty terrific to hear unfold.
[7]

Megan Harrington: The only thing I remember about the movie Drive is walking out of the theatre magpie-style enchanted with the shininess of College’s “A Real Hero” lyrics. I wanted to thank retail clerks by saying “you’ve turned out to be a real human being, and a real hero!” “Complete Surrender” has a similar quality, but phrased in the style of summer blockbuster movies — Call Me Out: A True Pretender and What You Want: Complete Surrender. It gives the song a tiny thrill of danger while doubling down on memorability.
[8]

Beyoncé v. Haim: The 2014 Bush v. Gore…

[Video][Website]
[7.80]

Anthony Easton: I was wrong about Haim. This is really enjoyable, and the vocals are fantastic. I just need to think of it as some kind of crate digging find from the mid-1990s, and then I can avoid the folderol, and just groove on something that hits my Wilson Phillips/Melissa Etheridge spots.
[8]

Alfred Soto: It’s a tribute to how singular Haim sounded in 2013 that they survived critics’ citing imprecise eighties referents, including yours truly. Even if I said the keyboard sparkles and insistent guitar curlicues reminded me of Tango in the Night-era Fleetwood Mac (the album’s replaced Tusk as generational touchstone), it doesn’t account for the hushed intensity of the sisters’ voices in the chorus. By never rising above a churn they maintain the tension. Live, however, this track reminds me of nobody.
[9]

Katherine St Asaph: Haim are the @tofu_product of bands: in their soft-rock omnivorousness, they evoke whatever you grew up with. (Me, I was born in the ’80s, so of course my references are both named Jennifer: Lopez, on “Waiting for Tonight,” and Paige, in general.) The reason it works is the genuine love, in the production, for the genre: the gentle synth-pad like the glow of highway streetlamps, the faintly tinny twinkle heralding the “wildest times.” It’s your emotional life on JACK-FM, and Haim makes that sound genuinely moving. Haim’s also an album-oriented band, and there’s a place for this in the album story cycle: the wistful regret after noping out of the perfectly good relationship of “The Wire,” the sadness for which the prickliness of “Don’t Save Me” is a shield. The feelings are relatable and could come from anyone; to make relatable feelings into great singles requires more. Greatness, you could say.
[9]

Edward Okulicz: Critics fall over themselves to tie these guys to their own well-regarded cultural touchstones, but on this song, what I’m most reminded of is Debbie Gibson and everything that was maligned then and sounds dated now about busy late-’80s pop (over)production. Without a drop of irony, Haim revel in the frothiness, from the bass to the grinning pastiche in the video. The chorus’s “visions of our love remind me” might be a reuse of the same trick as “if your love isn’t strong” but this time the aloofness is gone, the want jumps out of the speakers, and the effect on the heart is completely different. But the melody is just as bright.
[8]

Juana Giaimo: I don’t mean to say that if it wasn’t for its music video “If I Could Change Your Mind” would lack all interest, but compared to the mighty “Falling” or the joyful “The Wire,” this single needed something to complement it and the Haim sisters dancing in a very ’80s setting was the perfect choice. Their choreography highlights the beats of music — like when they’re clapping in the bridge, and even in its nostalgic tone when they appear as hypnotizing shadows. But overall, it shows that they can definitely bewitch you with their always charming personalities. 
[8]

Will Adams: Days Are Gone is a powerful statement of independence. Danielle, Este, and Alana tell you not to save them, that you’re gonna be okay after this breakup anyway, and that they’ll run away if you call their name, because those days are gone. “If I Could Change Your Mind” is a rare moment where they plead with their subject. It’s almost jarring to get this glimpse into another side of Haim. Almost, because the infectious guitar lines and tightly packed rhythm section are still there, pleading with you to dance.
[8]

Jonathan Bradley: As with “The Wire,” Haim marks its intent with the opening lyric: “No, please don’t cry.” This is a song that shudders like it were sobbing; reverberating drums and a stop-start bassline give unexpected weight to an arrangement so lissome. “If I Could Change Your Mind” also makes use of another Haim trick, directing its entire focus at a single emotional spot until the intensity is so strong it flickers into flame; here, the concern is the false possibility inherent in the titular “if.” An ever-present sparkling helps the whole thing hang together, while the “lying eyes” lyric is there because pop songs like this one should throw around phrases like that.
[8]

Scott Mildenhall: Music and meaning are rarely matched so well. An initial shattered gloom gradually gives way to gaps: the music stops, vacancy filled only by futile urgency. It’s gone, with only a vivid, almost filmic flashback of “visions of our love” on which to dwell and stoke the feelings still unquelled. It’s light on detail, but presentation doesn’t need much to make far more.
[7]

David Sheffieck: The hook’s not their strongest, but Haim maintain their status as the preeminent band for anyone who wants to experience the sounds of the ’70s as a bunch of foggy memories and instrumental signifiers thrown into a blender and pulsed until they’re the musical equivalent of a kale smoothie.
[5]

Brad Shoup: I just heard the news about DJ Rashad a couple hours ago, so I’ve been binging on footwork and juke playlists. There’s Rashad’s workouts, sure. I also came across DJ Nate’s “Call Me When You’re Sober,” which turns an old Evanescence fave into a baroque sob in a dark-ass room. And now I’ve come back to “If I Could Change Your Mind,” with its twitchy guitar/bass/drum rhythms and passed-down phrases rendered with gorgeous melodic care. It’s certainly not a juke approximate, but someone could take a sledgehammer to this and not break much. It’s certainly ready for the floor.
[8]

That’s great; it starts with an earthquake…

[Video][Website]
[6.57]

Patrick St. Michel: They are releasing NPR bumper music as singles now?
[4]

Alfred Soto: Honest and proficient. This combo proves young’uns can do bluegrass. What’s next?
[5]

Daniel Montesinos-Donaghy: A character study that is both jovial and sinister, turning Biblical apocalypse into a DIY story of self-belief. The calendar date normalizes the whole end of the world vibe, which is an interesting experiment.
[7]

Anthony Easton: Nickel Creek play at Baptist revivals, and being Baptist themselves, the actual date of the Second Coming is less important than the act itself. That said, the joy this has at the end of the world, released just before Easter, throws me off a bit. It’s just bad manners to be convinced that you will be saved, and not be the one drowning in the flood.
[5]

Brad Shoup: Living within the evangelical church requires the correct proportion of certainty to unease. (Though I’ll admit, unlike Harold Camping, I can only speak for myself.) You’re reliant both on things unseen — past things, things occurring within you, things to come — and on things unheard. All you get to hear is ancient passages, modern interpretations, your own testimony and confessions. All you hear is men, and all you want to hear is one divine whisper. Not an “I am the LORD your God,” necessarily — that’d be nice, yeah, but a “good job, kid” or “you have chosen… wisely” would be enough to last a thousand lifetimes. The beauty of Camping’s campaign was in its earnestness. The unsaved were given ample opportunity to repent; his organization spent boggling sums to spread the message countrywide. It was cousin to the well-fortified geniality practiced by folks who still pop up as Facebook friend requests. It’s a little off-putting to experience, and I wish I could say that I once lived that way, so I get it; maybe, though, my old friends don’t either, they just broadcast what is expected. Sean Watkins largely gives Harold the benefit of the doubt, inhabiting a joyful mind on the brink of glorification, and as such, he’s not given to gloating or second-guessing. The plaintive, sturdy melody might’ve pleased the old man. But then there’s that last verse, in which Watkins leaves his subject for one pointed dig. I was a little bummed he didn’t see it through to the end, but there are limits to identification. Each of us experiences a singular truth.
[9]

Edward Okulicz: It’s pop-bluegrass, so being a song of praise is not unexpected, but it’s not just the reference to the Ark that makes it feel like it has the air of a sea-shanty too. That might be key to its likeability even to a non-believer who would like to stay on Earth and commit lots of Biblical sins with the 2001 incarnation of mandolinist Chris Thile. The jauntiness of the music overcomes my aversion to rapture-anticipation, which even at its most earnest always sounds forced to me, and “Hallelujah” is these days totally useable as a secular oath, especially when given harmonies this lovely.
[7]

Tara Hillegeist: Plucking as winsomely reedy as the stalks you’d weave to make a basket and as inarguable in their handicraft. Nickel Creek’s warbled harmonies make soul-uneasy anxiety sound warm and welcoming. The lyrical fixation on the 21st of May, taken outside of any biographical context, creates a sentimental grotesque of blinkered specificity. On a bright cold Northern morning like this April day, this kind of barn-friendly spirituality has claws, and they dig in strong. If the hand of some angry heartsick god were to set the world ablaze someday, it may as well be the 21st of May as any other day. It may as well be today. Isn’t that a comforting thought?
[9]

Ladies and gentlemen, your K-pop Star season two champions…

[Video][Website]
[5.43]Brad Shoup: They’ve got a name straight out of a Smithsonian Folkways lyrics sheet, and a sound ripped from your trad-pop dreams. Rodgers guitar continues to find unworthies, but the summer-day horn chart is for everyone. This is the McGrath/Twain duet we deserve.
[5]

Iain Mew: The treacly half-funk backing the verses is almost as awkward as Lee Chan-hyuk’s rapping, which in turn isn’t quite as bad as the record scratching bit. Still, at least they provide textural variation, and I can accept them if they’re the product of a process that also comes up with the sunbursts of joy provided by the brass and Soo-hyun’s sections.
[6]

Patrick St. Michel: Easy-breezy as a Sunday picnic, the pair of siblings making up Akdong Musician tag-teaming up for an absolute stroll of a song. Its punctured by a few jolting moments — a gun being cocked when Lee Chan Hyuk sings about being “a soldier for you,” some changes in percussion, silly ad-libs — but is always focused on being as easygoing as possible.
[6]

Daniel Montesinos-Donaghy: Cuteness for nincompoops — cloying and aimless and unreal.
[3]

Will Adams: The vocals are as unctuous as the Kidz Bop-funk. That means that it’s passable — and contest-winning — but not much more.
[5]

Alfred Soto: The generic name is kind of charming, the guitar licks genial, the vocal friendly. I thought of this song, a staple of my senior year in high school: an exercise whose fidelity to genre constraints allows a space to play.
[7]

Daisy Le Merrer: Nice lite funk groove, banking on vocal charisma to get by an being mostly right to do so. Unsurprisingly, it turns out that the weaker male voice is also that of the musician/composer bigger brother (why else would he be there). He fortunately doesn’t get too much on the way of her performance. However, as much as I love his sister’s voice, she doesn’t have any real material to work the wonders she presumably is capable of. So “200%” is a particularly unfit title for a song where nothing seems dialed past a safe 6.
[6]