Also known as a waterpipe, narghile, arghila, qalyān, or shisha, for any rappers looking for remix ideas…

[Video]
[5.00]

Patrick St. Michel: I have smoked hookah three times total in my life. Each time, the night ended with me deeply embarrassed, because I am a hyper weakling when it comes to smoking anything, and I was coughing hysterically just sitting next to the stupid thing. Just hearing these guys repeat the titular item over and over again makes me shiver over the past. But Young Thug sounds like his voice is about to give out at any second, his throat packed with clouds, doing all he can to not give out. He’s the best part of this song. Tyga, meanwhile, is just eyeroll after eyeroll, — “we test a little sex practice,” dude just say you guys fucked — and weirdly makes me not cringe as much as I should through this. 
[5]

Daniel Montesinos-Donaghy: You’re not here for Tyga. Nobody’s here for Tyga, and nobody ever is. He is remarkably gifted at clinging to various artists and piggy-backing off them, bypassing the concept of co-signs or getting put on: he simply arrived and never let go. And now he can’t let go of Young Thug, a young Atlantan who sounds like a grizzled bluesman one moment, a village cryer the next and a Dali clock the moment after that. I’ve not been able to recite one of his verses, but that’s because emulating his barks is like trying to sing along to a Mike Patton record. He’s an original. Tyga is living a lifestyle separate to the worlds he inhabits, from Decaydance Records to the video version of “The Motto” to DJ Mustard’s first national hit. He’s there, but he never inhabits a space. Amazing: the first gossamer rapper.
[4]

Jonathan Bradley: Tyga’s more than capable of putting together a better song than he is a rapper, but this is no “Rack City” — Young Thug delivers an entire aesthetic along with his presence. The music box beat twinkles well enough, but it’s the guest star’s unconstructed vocals that are the true star, as if the hookah smoke is dismantling speech itself.
[7]

Alfred Soto: Talking loud and mush mouthed over Fisher-Price synth hooks sells the title concept, I must say.
[4]

Crystal Leww: Young Thug continues to whir, slur, whoop, and squawk his way through rap songs in a dizzingly captivating way. Here on “Hookah”, he displays the essence of a real chill bro who wants to have a good time without any of the negative parts that will come back to bite. His command to “pass me the hookah” is so high that the “s” doesn’t exist, and it comes across as so friendly and well-intentioned rather than demanding. There are few people who have such a strong yet unique voice, and it shows as soon as Tyga comes in. Tyga tries to skirt over this beat in a similar way as Young Thug, slurring his way through his verses, but it doesn’t work. His vibe is too aggressive, caring waay too much. Everyone of his signature “hahh!”s is demanding and boastful. “Hookah” gets away from a smoke-filled room full of chill vibes and into the aggressive VIP section full of cocaine as soon as Tyga comes through.
[5]

Brad Shoup: Young Thug’s just three years younger than Tyga, but Tyga sounds 10 years older: discovering pretension, working that B.o.B flow. (Plus he’s still talking about the Olsens.) Young Thug’s squishy croak is such that he can ask for the hookah ten times in a row and I could listen to another twenty. I don’t want to go American Routes on you, because Young Thug as he stands could never clear the respectability bar, but there’s something ancient and fresh in the way his sings, the way he’s making fun without having tested it first.
[5]

Giorgio starts every show by checking for the latest Singles Jukebox update…

[Video][Website]
[6.75]

Sabina Tang: You know how sometimes a joke grows more elaborate with every riff, until you end up taking it seriously? I want Nicolas Winding Refn to modernize his viking flick as a simultaneous sequel to Drive, transported to Japan in haut-weeaboo style: Valhalla Rising II: Tokyo Drift. Ryan Gosling’s inarticulate soulful driver, now in hock to the yakuza, versus Mads Mikkelsen’s one-eyed assassin, in the grand tradition of 1980s katana-wielding white ninjas. Gunplay in the labyrinthine depths of a Shinjuku-itchome hostess bar, and at least one Michael Mann shot in which blokes jump from a helicopter straight into a waiting police car to no discernable narrative effect. Well, fine — I can live with just the soundtrack. Thanks, Giorgio.
[8]

Anthony Easton: Do you know that amazing Tangerine Dream track that was playing when Tom Cruise fucked Rebecca De Mornay in the empty subway car in Risky Business? How much it seemed like a German attempt at an Americanization of an Italian reworking of an African American genre, but with the arrogance and smugness of Tom Cruise at his best – -how seamless it’s agitprop cock thrusts were? Has it seemed like that was the hidden source of so much of the disco reworkings lately — and given how much of a memory for camp/cheese the French have, could Daft Punk not be quoting that when they made the hagiographic track about Moroder on Random Access Memories? This recalls all of that, and asks the vital question: can you write your own hagiography?  
[8]

Brad Shoup: Put “Theme” in the title and most is forgiven. I’ll just make up some credits. Mororder pulses and pulses until the pullback, touching on motorik tributes to “Hash Pipe” and his own fête on Random Access Memories. He’s a huckster for sure, but it’s been a great grift.
[6]

Katherine St Asaph: Moroder zooms through three decades of dance history, house to trance to disco licks to “I Feel Love,” to claim it (again) as his own while shrugging out a humblebrag: “It’ll have some arpeggios and nice chords.” He even cut his own “Giorgio by Moroder.” The commentariat is less than pleased (RA commenter: “sounds like daft punk taking a shit”), but “Giorgio’s Theme” is still great because it is simpatico to three Moroder principles: there is no better way to live your career than the way that lets you cut your own goddamn theme song in your 70s; machines do it steadier; if you fix your gaze longingly enough on something far off and enticing, then it, or you, will melt.
[8]

Scott Mildenhall: It’s hard to justify an instrumental’s 8-minute length without it either being extremely catchy or full of variety. Far from the latter, “Giorgio’s Theme” has the temerity to repeat long passages in lieu of actually going anywhere. It might be better cut in half, with some nice words over the top.
[6]

Thomas Inskeep: Moroder is the master of the build, and proves it again here. The first three minutes of “Giorgio’s Theme” could’ve been recorded 35 years ago, but it’s not retro per se, because he was so very ahead of his time that we’ve simply caught up to where he was then. The rest of the track reminds us that he’s still paying attention, melding yesterday/today better than anything I’ve heard recently, and a flawless reminder that today’s techno still owes a massive debt to the sonics Moroder was crafting in the ’70s. 
[9]

Alfred Soto: I’m grateful an audience exists for electronic syncopations, whooshes, and motorik in 2014. Having acknowledged its existence, Moroder needs to push it.
[4]

Jonathan Bradley: “Giorgio’s Theme” lurks like a brooding “I Feel Love,” as if Moroder felt the need to re-stake his claim on a sound he’s always owned, daft punks be damned. In that case: yes Giorgio, noted.
[5]

Why can’t we be nicer to him?

[Video][Website]
[4.78]Rebecca Toennessen: I love Jack White with the force of a thousand fiery, slightly deranged suns but I often wish he’d stay inside his gaslamp-lit mansion surrounded by his taxidermy animals and never open his damn fool mouth again, except to sing songs like this. But, as he puts it, even God herself knows when I say nothing, I say everything. “Lazaretto” shrieks angrily, crunchy and slicky with a classic JWIII solo that admittedly isn’t groundbreaking but feels so much like coming home to me.
[9]

Crystal Leww: The funniest thing about this whole Jack White vs. The Black Keys debate is that it’s like debating between two terrible ripoffs of bluesy rock music. I have no desire to judge either for their authenticity; it’s perfectly fine for artists to reinterpret and reinvent, but it’s fucked up that Jack White is claiming ownership over a sound that isn’t his to claim. Further, White’s music is uninspired, like someone who read about the elements of bluesy rock in a textbook and made a song based on that. “Lazaretto” has that growly voice, a suspiciously well placed guitar solo, and some droning on about prisons, the masses, and ashes. There’s a god damn fiddle involved right when you’d expect it. It’s all gimmick, no substance.
[4]

Patrick St. Michel: Could have just bought a Rage Against The Machine shirt from Hot Topic.
[4]

Brad Shoup: He already wrote the worst Beastie Boys tribute, so why not bring it home for some Kid Rock love? He loves to talk about braggadocio like it’s his thesis subject, but his controlled freakiness is wearying; White’s been actualizing for two decades. I’m ready for textures, like from the swinging fiddle, or even the fadeout, where the delay-heavy nu-rock riff quickens and dissipates in the wash.
[5]

Alfred Soto: In which Jack White hears the Beastie Boys’ “Funky Boss” and likes it. A pity: a month ago I saw the title and thought he covered Lindstrøm and Todd Terje.
[3]

Jonathan Bradley: It’s tempting, particularly as he follows the Pearl Jam route of monkishly disavowing his best pop instincts, to dismiss Jack White as a stodgy nostalgist who has mistaken pantomime for authenticity. But that’s not quite right; “Lazaretto” isn’t the meat-and-potatoes work of the traditionalist ascetic White would like us to imagine him to be. It’s stuffed with ideas, some of them good. His ice-splinter guitar-work on verse two channels Wes Borland at his more creative, and he interrupts those delicate accents with a hot and choked guitar solo that gasps with slit-throat violence. The middle eight burbles with CGI sci-fi flourishes, which less inspiringly, give way to a curiously out-of-place fiddle solo. It’s forward-thinking in a very 1970s way, convinced that rock and roll’s potential is limitless if it can only get big enough, and that all ideas get better when translated into the language of long-haired frontmen and blues-inherited boogie.
[3]

Anthony Easton: Jack White thinks he can save rock and roll, and like some Primitive Baptists, thinks that he can do that by time travelling to an ur-state. The problem with both Jack and the Baptists is twofold — the Holy Spirit and the spirit of rock and roll are continually renewing, and one can never return back to the womb. There might even be a third problem: rock and roll and Christianity are too strange to have a unified origin. When White is on — “Hardest Button to Button,” “Seven Nation Army,” and especially his cover of “I Just Don’t Know What to Do with Myself” — his work is new, infused with history, but present with a prophetic renewal. When he is off — this — it becomes ossified in how it seeks purity.
[2]

Thomas Inskeep: I’m not generally inclined towards skronky guitar rock, which makes the joy I find in “Lazaretto” all the more surprising and, well, enjoyable. The White Stripes were for my money one of the most clever, and rocking, bands of the ’00s, and more so than anything I heard from Jack White’s first solo album this continues that march. This isn’t the pretentious “let me tell you all about reupholstering” White (Rolling Stone, you did him no favors); this is the White of It Might Get Loud, who just wants to shred. “Lazaretto” sounds for all the world like a record I imagine Bo Diddley would make in 2014: weird, like Sun Ra with a cigar-box guitarist and a hot-shit Nashville fiddler. And it’s better than that sounds.
[7]

Katherine St Asaph: Jack White is most likely a ridiculous asshole, which places him in a grand canonical tradition we can duly ignore. Half his performance is credible, the other half like a Jim Carrey impression. The title suggests all sorts of words I’d rather not hear Jack White sing (“bordello,” “libretto,” “ghetto”), but his throughline’s pretty standard, roguish picaresque bullshit that doesn’t embarrass him. Which all makes this sound pretty average, but “Lazaretto” scuzzes and overdrives its way past the [5] mark.
[6]

*resist joke*

[Video][Website]
[4.62]

Anthony Easton: A very average song that I would not turn off it was playing on the radio, which reminds me of a slightly updated version of We Built This City. Weirdly, does not seem to have an actual crescendo. 
[3]

Crystal Leww: Terius Nash is often credited in music nerd circles for being a male who is great at writing for women, but Pharrell is someone who we don’t talk about enough, despite writing for big names like Kelis, Britney, and Beyoncé. I’m not sure what skin in the game Pharrell has writing for the virtually unknown Jetta, but “Crescendo” is him firing on all cylinders with a female vocalist who completely bodies his vibe. Jetta is perfect as the carefree summer gal, the one who needs little other than a crop top and a street to strut her stuff on, the one who flits and fills this melody, who skips on this guitar. It’s pointless, even crabby, to point out the corniness of how the music mirrors the lyrics, which are talking about a musical element anyway. We’re at peak-Pharrell part two after all.
[7]

Alfred Soto: A diminuendo more like. 
[4]

Will Adams: Jetta’s got a fine voice, but her backing sounds so thin and unfinished that it’s a wonder she was able to muster any energy in the vocal booth.
[4]

Patrick St. Michel: Geez, Jetta should not give advice about what to do at a gas station, unless you have money to throw away. 
[5]

Brad Shoup: Street sounds, brought to you by Pharrell and Pepsi. A chipper bass, a bored drummer, a musical-theater chorus. Her greatest legacy may be a Facebook page that passes the PR Turing test.
[3]

Mallory O’Donnell: I suppose it would be a bit rich to expect there to be any actual use of crescendo in the making of the song “Crescendo.” But this interpretation?  All the musical elements stomp along at exactly the same level of volume with almost literally no build. Meanwhile, the lyrics seemingly confuse “crescendo” with “background noise.” Other than that, it’s not half-bad.
[5]

Katherine St Asaph: As if Pharrell gave himself the writing prompt of reworking “Lose Yourself to Dance” out of the shards of “Heart of Glass.” Shame about the lack of crescendoes.
[6]

The title refers to our treatment of her latest single, of course.

[Video]
[6.50]

Britt Alderfer: I like how on a track called “Tough Love” Ware has moved into her upper range and expressed a new vulnerability; wisely, that’s the point. She’s worried about hitting these notes live, but I have no doubt that she can do it. Let it be known that I am a fan of Jessie Ware. I just want to forever ban the word ‘classy’ being used to describe her, as if restraint is what makes her music good and we can stop right there. Being down-to-earth is not automatic virtue; it’s a calculated choice, too. The swoops of her music seldom cause anxiety; instead she trades in a kind of eventual trust, comes at me like a disarming friend in a confidential chat. She makes me think of the sensuality of hands, gazes from across a room, upcoming weddings, a particular blue dress, rain that won’t stop, certain frequented bars, a dogeared white book. I think of an itinerary of past and future relationships to her album Devotion, like places marked on a map. I think of how she put her boyfriend in her music video and how they are now planning to be married this year in Greece. And too, her quiet moments, and mine, are the subject of love songs. “Tough Love” slows it down to hit harder, and is a success.
[9]

Brad Shoup: Tough doesn’t have to drag in the same connotations, I suppose, so we don’t have to pretend the kick drum is someone ragged and right setting you to sleep. Ware’s not experiencing tough love so much as summoning it; she sings “tough” with a new trailing syllable, snapping the word off for emphasis. The synths shudder and settle around her, as determined as their master to make something happen, specifically — spoiler alert — those Kiesza coos.
[7]

Alfred Soto: With a gated Linn drum programmed with an ear bent towards “Computer Blue” and a vocal pushing at the limits of her range, Jessie Ware edges closer to a gossamer-enclothed melodrama, unencumbered by connections to the human race. I don’t mind this, but after “Imagine It Was Us” showed she could boogie I want out of her head.
[6]

Thomas Inskeep: I’ll pretty much give a 5 off the top to anything using that Linn drum from “The Beautiful Ones.” Another point because Ware’s voice is lovely. No more than that because 10 minutes after the song’s done, I can barely remember it.
[6]

Anthony Easton: Softer and sadder than the Gotye sound, but nearly as wistful. Most of the points here are for how “tough love” sounds like “Tupelo” a tiny bit, and I wanted an Emmylou Harris remake. 
[6]

Patrick St. Michel: Plus one for production team BenZel dropping their doofy “Japanese high school girls who love making socks and listening to J Dilla and dress up as Hello Kitty or something” characters, because that was the worst. That’s about the only positive development though, as “Tough Love” is a pretty unremarkable mid-tempo ballad where simply sounding squiggly is a stand-in for any real interesting production touches or drama.
[5]

BLEH BLEH BLEH

[Video]
[5.86]

David Sheffieck: I’ll take Ryan Tedder’s bag of tricks over, say, Pharrell’s any day – here, it’s the delicate a capella “I keep going to the river” before the final chorus reprise that gets me most. Predictable? Unquestionably. Effective? I sure can’t deny it.
[7]

Thomas Inskeep: Signed by Simon Cowell, given a big first single by Ryan Tedder – so she’s Leona Lewis, then? Henderson seems to have a capital-V voice, and knows what to do with it on this big, slightly skewed pop (aka pop, not turbo-pop of the Katy Perry variety) record. Potential here, though I frankly don’t expect much. Maybe she’ll surprise.
[5]

Alfred Soto: Reciting Tedderisms over ponderous piano and Maroon 5 rhythm licks, Ella Henderson sings with the confidence of a new star guaranteed a number one hit (she was right). Her voice is like the river she sings about, eroding sharps and edges in the interest of maintaining a pace.
[3]

Megan Harrington: I love Ryan Tedder’s sense of economy: piano, thunderous drums, handclaps, a funky guitar riff, and Henderson’s voice quadruple tracked into its own chorus all have their moment in “Ghost.” He’s just shameless and so am I, he could orchestrate this in his sleep but it always sounds thrilling to me. My score errs on the lower side of my surging heartbeat because the lyrics are weak. Henderson’s got a strong J. Spaceman start in “I keep going to the river to pray” but ends the couplet with “cos I need something that can wash all the pain.” Immediately, I want to re-write that second line as “cos I need something to wash the pain away.” As well, “soul” should be somewhere (really, everywhere) in this song, but the closest Henderson gets is “spirit.” Her writing is either rushed or green. 
[7]

Scott Mildenhall: Entering a pantheon of musical talent to have escaped northern Lincolnshire including Rod Temperton, Bernie Taupin and Kim from Pop Idol 2, Ella Henderson has what can only be described as “pipes” to go along with “Ghost”‘s moderate funk, and she deploys them with aplomb. She goes high, she goes low, she goes hiccupy, brilliantly interpreting lyrics admittedly silly – venturing down to Tetney Lock to pretend you’re an evangelical American from the 60s? – but equally coherent.
[7]

Will Adams: Hand-in-glove, Ryan Tedder’s technically perfect, terminally inoffensive style is a perfect match for X Factor alum Ella Henderson. The injected gospel references have reached a breaking point; the down to the river line is repeated endlessly, as if attempting to trick the listener into thinking there’s something soulful about this.
[5]

Brad Shoup: Nu-northern soul, riding pop piano progressions and pop-funk rhythm guitar; it’s a distant cousin to John Newman’s “Love Me Again,” with allusions to DJ Mustard’s yelling dudes. I’m mostly here for the way she pronounces “ghost”.
[7]

Today’s posts were brought to you by the letter “You.”

[Video][Website]
[7.17]

Scott Mildenhall: An initial envisaged consolation of the subject sitting silent in a room as rain taps at the window ends up an unhinged declaration of supposed independence in the midst of a movie screen thunderstorm. For a while in between there’s a threat that it will become more songy — Monarchy are good at that too — but instead it fakes out and it flips out, desperate denials of internal pain realised as demented racket.
[8]

Alfred Soto: Roger Troutman + Barry Gibb + cheapo rave effects + sand guitar = discoindiepocalypse.
[3]

Anthony Easton: I like this before the rest of the noise ramps up, and covers a voice that might be intriguingly flat otherwise. 
[6]

Juana Giaimo: Maybe this is just another standard electronic song with another typical lyric theme as it is a break up. But its harshness is quite unusual with lines like “tears won’t help you” and “sometimes you only see the light when you’re standing in darkness”. There is no pity or nostalgia, just feelings of liberation that are reflected with the progression of the song towards an unknown territory. 
[7]

Will Adams: It begins so guarded, the narrator feigning confidence to himself and his ex-partner. But the storm brewing inside shows his cards, and by the second chorus we’ve gone from a gentle letdown to maddened electro. It’s music for dancing alone without abandon, for coming to terms with being without that someone.
[9]

Brad Shoup: Melodically, it’s perfect. Fantastic, surprising choices for the vocal line, supported in a sublime moment by a metallic drumroll. Sometimes you can pay tribute to R&B by making the same little clever choices, and so it is with this ultimately frantic floorfiller.
[10]

Too sad for snark…

[Video][Website]
[7.29]

Jessica Doyle: It’s 2 am, and the lights of the hotel bar are all tinted blue, and the chair is so padded you’re half afraid you might just fall asleep there, so you try not to focus on the blue reflecting off the remaining cube of ice in your glass; but you’re pretty sure the two people sitting in your line of sight, dressed too well even for a nice hotel like this, are in the midst of breaking up, so you can’t look at them, either.
[6]

Alfred Soto: John Grant, fresh after last year’s triumphant Pale Green Ghosts, brings singer-songwriter chops for those looking for scenarios and so forth on a post-house album. “I Try to Talk to You” is one of the few good songs about HIV written in recent years, and, thanks to the piano, not the least doleful despite sounding on first hearing like Beck over a Levan remix.
[8]

Brad Shoup: It’s difficult to imagine this sparking any dancing; it’s more like a crushing little film on TV during the witching hour. The tension between Grant’s affectless distress and garish elements like the piano run and the crying violin is the real meat.
[6]

Anthony Easton: This is very now, this is what the sad faggots are listening to, against the memory of other spaces; this is the sound of the net replacing actual cruising, this is the crystal palace before it burns down, this is the new oblivion, this is very sad; this is not boring enough to be interesting. 
[5]

Abby Waysdorf: The 80s-underground-disco atmosphere, the earthy vocals, the David Bowie piano: it works brilliantly, although I’ve sat here for a good half-hour trying to put into words exactly why. It’s not just the references, it’s the way it all comes together, the way the vocals smoke over the subtle but insistent beat, the piano trailing in and out. Sometimes there just aren’t words other than “I really love this.” 
[9]

Thomas Inskeep: My husband, upon hearing that I had to review this: “You’d better give it a good review!” He’s a huge fan of both Andy Butler and John Grant; I’m less so, but this is a very inspired marriage of song and singer. Returning to the soil he hoed on the H&LA eponymous debut, The Feast of the Broken Heart is true modern disco, and like Antony Hegarty on that record, John Grant fronting dance music is a smart move on the parts of everyone involved. Taken out of his land of acoustic guitar and plopped down amidst orchestra hits, Grant actually gains some resonance and power, while Butler gets the great gravitas he needs for a song with this emotional heft. 
[8]

Scott Mildenhall: Disco heartbreak taken to a level beyond heartbreak, at least in the time-honoured tears in the toilets sense. Others have done it talking about Vietnam, or Hiroshima, but, like with “Smalltown Boy” it can still be aligned with the personal. With that it doesn’t just feel more serious, it also feels more immediate; doubly weird with the disco no less prominent. “In The Night 1995” meets the flourishing piano of 70s ABBA as well as haunted 80s ABBA, with Grant a Guy Garvey-esque weary angel, barely inflecting, bringing instead the plainest, deadened dolour.
[9]

What’s that song called again?

[Video][Website]
[5.50]

David Sheffieck: Halfway between dance track and lullaby, even once it picks up that pace after the slowest opening minutes ever, and never quite convincing as either.
[5]

Alfred Soto: Until the tempo change, reminiscent of quieter British takes on R&B like Imagination. How you feel about either depends on tolerance for sop and blankly wet vocals.
[5]

Brad Shoup: Like someone paddling their way out of a melted-sugar morass. This sort of pitchshifting toward dance-pop transcendence is already being done overseas; I have no idea why Merge is getting into this game.
[4]

Patrick St. Michel: Dan Snaith is capable of making really good dance music, but “Can’t Do Without You” seems content to just lead up to… nothing worthy of a prolonged build.
[5]

Thomas Inskeep: Trancey in the Steve Reich sense, not the Oakenfold one — though like an Oakenfold track, it builds and builds. It doesn’t really go anywhere, but the trip is fun nonetheless. 
[6]

Megan Harrington: Maybe it’s time for an oil change or a juice detox, but I get so caught up in the ultra-repetitious first 30 seconds of “Can’t Do Without You” that I fall asleep before the breezy payoff. It’s like making plans for all the ways you’ll relax during your day at the beach and then sun sleeping because it’s too perfect to stay conscious. Sure, Caribou could have packed an energy drink, but the song’s snooze inducing tick-tock is not without merits. 
[5]

Will Adams: Reaches an emotionally resonant point in its final forty seconds, when the tempo accelerates and the vocals break from their standstill to spill their guts. Were the preceding three minutes compelling enough to warrant returning.
[5]

Anthony Easton: In its repetition, almost like a liturgical exercise, closer to a prayer than a song. Has a solid hope and a discreet optimism. 
[9]

We do tend not to cover many wolf-masked Limp Bizkits…

[Video][Website]
[7.00]

Patrick St. Michel: I hate most contemporary Japanese rock music. OK, that’s maybe a little strong — always will have these guys — but whereas J-pop in 2014 is overflowing with great ideas, J-rock leans on HEAVY RIFFS and YELLING and GUYS WEARING WOLF HEADS WHO SOUND LIKE LIMP BIZKIT. Tokyo outfit Passepied have teased at being an alternative from the jock-ish junk clogging the charts, but until recently they’ve always felt like they were missing something to separate them from the groups they took cues from. They’ve made strides lately, though, and “Tokyo City Underground” is their finest moment to date, a twisty number starting as a fidgety stomper before breaking into a dash and pivoting into other ideas along the way. It’s great because it manages to be dramatic and multi-parted without sacrificing catchiness — the one thing they’ve always had going for them — showing that the stuff that plays at your typical Japanese rock festival doesn’t have to be just knuckle-headed towel-waving music. 
[8]

Megan Harrington: Style Council’s soulful synthesizers and The Stills’ rainy guitars make a sophisticated and romantic pairing on “Tokyo City Underground.” The instrumental heaviness is cut by an undiminished vocal cheeriness that suggests a sort of new wonder in your familiar surroundings. Together the song feels light and modern, perfect for the days when you want to see something new without leaving your own head. 
[8]

Brad Shoup: I’m hearing Scritti Politti: in the imported island rhythms, the nu-rock chunks and the profound jazz chords upon which Oogoda Natuski suspends her line endings. That it still ends up as a rather straightforwardly structured pop-rock tune just adds to its lineage.
[8]

Anthony Easton: The French classical dance Passepied is named after is mostly an abstracted pastoral (it came from the same time as the painter Lorrain), and featured pairs of lovers formally reenacting a courtship dance with very little touching. It is a dance about aesthetics rather than sex. I find the idea fascinating, but have no idea what this song has to do with that. 
[5]

Alfred Soto: The disco strings and Franz Ferdinand riffage honor their name, and if the vocals don’t honor them let’s all meet up in the year 2000.
[6]

Crystal Leww: The guitar work here reminds me of tricot and their playful experimentation with mechanization and maths, but it’s all reeled in and kept within the boundaries of a normal song structure by the drums. Those drums put in work as a guiding rhythm that vividly conjures up memories of the drumming that drove the sadly defunct Those Dancing Days. The result is delightfully poppy and twinkly for what could be a standard guitar track.
[6]

Will Adams: The jazz chords threaten to push this into treacly territory, but the propulsive chorus rushes by like an express train, and it’s exhilarating. I wish the New York subways felt like this.
[7]

Katherine St Asaph: For a while half the New York subway cars had this Sophie Blackall piece up. This is like the polka-dotted girls snatching the fern bouquet, opening the cello case to unleash one of those Disney-cartoon rainbow swaths of music, and duetting with the clown. Trust me that this is good.
[8]