Ending with a video in which our protagonist is definitely not one of the guys…

[Video][Website]
[6.62]

Iain Mew: The centrepiece of I Never Learn, it’s the song where the force of Lykke Li’s vocals get the best counterweight, a tense rattle for her to wind around and snap free from. Even when the meaning gets murky, that dynamic is as enjoyable as its parts.
[7]

Rebecca A. Gowns: In the first verse, it sounds like Lykke Li is channeling a Goth chanteuse like Siouxsie Sioux. This is not quite right, for as the chorus explodes, the true spirit comes charging in with the beat: pure Pat Benatar, pushing forward with aggression and rainbow colors. The lyrics are dramatic, bordering on maudlin, but they’re delivered with a clear-eyed sincerity. The song explodes with sound, but through it all, Lykke Li remains the calm eye of the storm; this is not a performance of emotional pain, but a meditation on it.
[8]

Anthony Easton: Li manages to work the vocals fairly close to the avant, but her pop instincts are pure sparkle. It doesn’t try too hard, but just rides that ineffable middle. 
[7]

Megan Harrington: The draggy intro, delivered in Sia double time (all slur, no hard consonants), is a fair price to pay for the glorious Martika chorus. I almost feel weird that I’m so psyched up by what is theoretically a sad song, but, no, let me go get my drum pads. I want to play along. 
[8]

Alfred Soto: A Shangri-Las ethos given Jesus & Mary Chain production and a singer with the wracked intensity of Kristin Hersh. The album’s best song.
[6]

Brad Shoup: I don’t think anything would have been lost by stringing the massive rock strut over more territory, but I’m not Li. I do think it might have helped lift a raft of death-imagery, but then again, she’s so clearly thrilled with it. There’s a spot of two where her multi-tracking actually yields harmonies, and that provides its own kind of propulsion, however brief. Definitely a wonder for the chorus.
[6]

Katherine St Asaph: One of the subtler, yet more pernicious, manifestations of sexism in music is how when women are involved, the discussion shifts away from craft or legacy or importance toward gossipy and/or personal chatter, which usually just means dating. This takes many forms: Billboard recruiting 10 female music critics only to ask them whether they’d give Robin Thicke a pity fuck, or the litany of “so do you write from the heart?” questions in interviews (if it isn’t “so how’s your love life?”), or how I Never Learn, when it’s praised, is praised in terms of being a “perfect breakup album.” Not only is this not really a critical stance, it’s inherently unfalsifiable. Sure, I didn’t really care for the album. I also haven’t been dumped lately — being so serious and haggard and isolated at such a young age results, at least, in that. But I’d like to think my critical stance is independent of my relationship status — that stance being that Li tries to have it both ways: dreary arty sadpiece, first collaboration with Greg Kurstin. On the album “Gunshot” is a welcome burst of energy, but in isolation it ends up illustrating the problem anyway: verses like ABBA’s “SOS,” chorus like Sia’s “Chandelier,” each undermining the other, neither as good as the comparison.
[5]

Abby Waysdorf: It’s fine, you know? Another in the “slow echoing beats and dreamy/high singing” that will be the way the 2010s are remembered in future nostalgia. I’m not sure if it’s all that standout of a version of the sound, but it’s catchy enough, and the Pretenders-esque guitars that come in on the chorus are interesting. I won’t mind hearing more of it, but I probably won’t seek it out, either.
[6]

Hey kids! Bella has a pop career!

[Video][Website]
[7.18]

Luisa Lopez: Jenny Lewis is a chameleon — a vocalist who speaks in eye rolls as she simultaneously makes wanting and yearning musical, palatable. The Watson Twins made her lonely, “Glendora” made her vengeful. Every laughable fear here is transformed into celebration, ill-advised or not. A song about women that doesn’t crumple. The lyrics being less important than the sound — the sound itself being disaffected, halfway vocoded, the most triumphant verse nearly a throwaway, and the song itself is almost useless until the self-conscious joke of I’m just another lady without a baby, which is expectantly crooned, made to sound almost stupid, but it does cut across the jocular desire to be just one of the guys with a real, hysterical heartache and well, that’s life! (The song also being very significant for the appearance of Kristen Stewart in a tracksuit in the music video, which should not go ignored.)
[8]

Alfred Soto: Echo-swathed vocals and metronome of a rhythm section — I recoiled. Substitute the harpsichord for a mandolin, add stronger electric rhythm interjections, and  step up the pace and this well-observed account of the front lines of the sex wars would be the bro-country riposte that NPR and Slate have waited for.
[7]

Thomas Inskeep: This is proof that “alt-country” need not be a four-letter word: sharp lyrics, good Lanois-does-Emmylou production, and a singer who knows that “feminist” isn’t a four-letter word, either. 
[6]

Anthony Easton: Jenny Lewis is one of those artists whose history and personae make you want to cheer her on. That she has one of the great voices in indie right now, and has the potential to be one of the legends in country vocals if she ever goes in that direction, is part of that for me. This is what the last Neko song wanted to be, but it’s more complicated than that. I love the jangled intro, or the chorus, which might as well be Fountains of Wayne meets late stage feminism, or that heartbreak hidden in buoyancy. And all of that said, no matter how light the work it is, that feminism, that rigorous, engendered anger is positioned at the forefront. The last few lines, about prayer and what ladies do, is such a refusal of both pop history and institutional misogyny — and it’s clever and musical to boot. Rarely do brilliant politics and brilliant musicianship work so seamlessly together. 
[10]

Megan Harrington: Lewis is jamming a few concrete ideas onto a flimsy cotton melody that can’t bear their weight. The easiest to untangle from the pack is that, like our favorite aging tabloid queens, Lewis is childless and approaching the end of her fertility. Swaddling this conceit are the the fuzzier afterthoughts that her age and status have alienated her from both men and women (she’s the only sister, she’s rude to a child bride, she’s not one of the guys) and that gender norms have restrained. It’s a personal plight; I don’t relate. What’s strange to me isn’t that she feels this way but that she wants to put all her worries in a song about as solid as a spritz of air freshener. Did she think we wouldn’t notice?
[5]

Will Adams: I was with it until the ba-da-da’s, which illuminated the melody’s dull lilt. Lewis challenges gender norms, but the ambling music doesn’t make the commentary as punchy as it could be.
[5]

Patrick St. Michel: A catchy song that sounds better and better with each listen…nothing complex, but, hey, that can be a blessing. 
[6]

Rebecca A. Gowns: A wonderful exploration of gender roles, modern relationships, personal journeys, and the expectations that hang heavy over all of it. The song sparkles as much as it trudges; it’s full of wishes, but also expressing a long exhaustion, like Candy Darling wondering what more the world requires from her and her body. Jenny’s voice is as refreshing as ever, with her songwriting as mature as it’s always been. She has mastered the art of writing the personal towards the universal.
[9]

Brad Shoup: Draggy and devastating, a long summer sidewalk trip that ends up with you realizing you made your choices so they’re yours. Lewis’s main vocal provides the caustic humor, all the others provide the poignance. (The counterpoint in the singalong gets me the most gutted of anything I’ve heard this year.) It’s all matched with a fuck-you, reverbed stroll and a jangly arrangement, giving it the feel of something I can love, even belt out, but never truly understand.
[10]

Katherine St Asaph: The music is too bleach-soaked, the video too cheerily rebloggable, to resonate with me. If the lyrics lacerated at all it might have resonated anyway, but I can’t tell whether her complaint is not relating to the guys, not relating to the girls, or just not being married. If you want to be cynical, many girls are chafed by guy culture, many girls have found themselves the unmarried daughter, many girls don’t want to be reminded of that while talking to their married high school classmates — why, this part of this song is them! Forer-effect songwriting, then.
[5]

Juana Giaimo: Jenny Lewis isn’t the kind of artist whom you can call unpredictable. Writing country-influenced confident and emotional songs has been a strength. “Just One of the Guys” shows her again pretending to be a strong woman who doesn’t need anybody’s help (“I’ve been the only sister to my own sorrow”), but confessin  in the chorus that she isn’t like that at all. Maybe it’s because I take her songs too seriously, but when she suddenly gets lonely in the bridge and sings, “When I look at myself all I can see, I’m just another lady without a baby”, it seems that her façade crumbles down and we can see her real self. Admitting that she isn’t a mother, the role that society wants for her, demonstrates that, although change isn’t what she is looking for in her music, she is always growing up.
[8]

“Vroom vroom!” — The bass.

[Video][Website]
[7.00]

Cédric Le Merrer: Reminding the great tradition of stylish Parisian electro-pop initiated by Elli & Jacno in the 80’s, this combines staccato vocals and synths plinks and is about modern loving. But where Tout Va Sauter was romantic, Yelle is more hedonistic-nihilistic in the face of the Apocalypse. Hence that carnal chorus (which should be commended for avoiding the great dubstep pull). There’s a sweet equilibrium between softly crunching synths and high, sad plinks.
[8]

Will Adams: Teetering on the precipice of unrelenting love, “Bouquet Final” is a far cry from Yelle’s earlier songs about sex toys and dissing rappers. Though it’s not as if Safari Disco Club hadn’t forecasted such a shift. And it’s a fine direction to pursue; Julie Budet’s voice has never sounded prettier. She successfully navigates the space between resigned acceptance and anxious anticipation of the inevitable. The music, too, has become more sophisticated. The plinking melody, mimicking Budet’s tiny “OK”‘s, is enveloped by the octave leaping synth halfway through, making the song sound ten stories tall. And just when it lets you float for the bridge, it tosses you back into the fray.
[9]

Juana Giaimo: For the ones who haven’t been following Yelle’s career, this song is a pleasent surprise. Her rather irritable voice has suddenly turned smooth and cold at the same time, while the futuristic electronics are subtle but can grow in intensity in the chorus. 
[7]

Katherine St Asaph: Buzzes and vrooms in search of a song, or at least a framework.
[4]

David Sheffieck: The chorus doesn’t seem to commit, essentially just layering a few extra synths on top of the verses’ backing, but there’re enough interesting choices here (the weirdest being the extended, lyric-less bridge) to keep the song going.
[5]

Scott Mildenhall: Even more than on “L’Amour Parfait”, Yelle are overwhelmingly ambivalent about an ideally enjoyable situation, tempering this description of what could be a moment of pure unity with second-guessing and an atmosphere heady in disquiet rather than exhilaration. There’s no comfort whatsoever, trademark nursery rhyme melodies turned portentous as the track vworps very similarly to deadmau5′ “Ghosts ‘n’ Stuff”, only with less inclination to beat you round the head with its sentiment.
[8]

Alfred Soto: Until the sawtooth synths cut through this plank of a track, the electronics and vocals are sturdy complements.
[5]

Patrick St. Michel: “Bouquet Final” plays out like a lot of EDM-glazed pop. It starts slow and eventually builds to a point where the sounds become scrambled. Yelle, though, tries her best to not make it seem like another Ctrl-C pop offering; “Bouquet Final” is too slinky for the Ultra Festival. Depending how much you trust quickly Googled translation sites, this one is about letting go and just embracing passion (“we fuck like good friends”), and the music reflects this, tip-toeing and then just going for it. 
[7]

Brad Shoup: Like I could guess where Yelle would end up. Glitch-pop Annie? OK. The smeared synths work like midrange horns on the refrain; in the bridge they attain a demented grandeur. It’s like grieving in a well-lit room.
[9]

Iain Mew: “OK” isn’t much, but the way Yelle precisely sings it as she picks her way through thawing synth shards, “OK” is massive. It’s the sound of resolve and finality, imposing calm certainty after a big event. Except maybe it’s not quite finality? Maybe the event hasn’t happened, or at least hasn’t finished happening. And then we’re in the move in for a kiss and more, and everything has gone slow motion but she can still feel her pulse racing and there’s all this blurring as blood rushes, and if they do it everything’s going to fall apart and… OK. OK. Worries pushed aside. “Baisons comme de bons amis”: like good friends. The whirring that sounded like the song wobbling off-track transforms into its ecstatic centre. If the sex could be final, all the more reason to enjoy it.
[8]

Beyonce’s favorite R&B singer garners diminishing returns…

[Video][Website]
[4.56]

Megan Harrington: Ignore Rick Ross and forgive whatever Faustian deal brought about his appearance. Focus instead on Luke James and his ode to divorce. He sings about violence, running, a daughter, and with each new twist a new set of options. He presents them in the present tense — options they have, options they share — but as more details creep in from the edges of the frame, it’s clear that they don’t have options. There isn’t even a “they” to speak of; James has fled. His voice confirms this: memories are delivered with tender pliability, but that word, “options,” is a crisp snap. It’s damp, dark, and sinewy even in its density. 
[8]

Katherine St Asaph: A triumph of slow-build style over substance; also, a test of one’s ability to tune out Rick Ross.
[7]

Brad Shoup: Just grim stuff, like “Holy Grail”, but instead of fame he’s singing about a Manic-Depressive Dream Girl. The piano flutters about, looking for a place to land while James simpers and Rick Ross can’t even be bothered. “On to the next sentence”? Fuck outta here.
[2]

Will Adams: The tightly wound piano chords in the intro unfurl into something more heartfelt. “This lyric is a miracle,” sings James, as if pouring this out is painful for him. But it’s justified; he performs with the anxiety of someone who’s been given the mic for the first time in ever, which makes “Options” the dramatic tale that not even Rick Ross’ lukewarm verse could hinder.
[7]

Thomas Inskeep: What is he going on about? James is an alright singer, but this song makes no goddamn sense, and Rick Ross just gets in the way. And “this lyric is” most definitely not “a miracle.”
[4]

Josh Love: Beyond the fact that dude’s a third-rate Frank Ocean or that Rick Ross’ dumb incongruous ass can’t even make an appearance on a song with somber subject matter without a prefatory “Maybach Music” drop, there’s the bigger issue of James’ super-helpful empathetic advice that “Maybe taking life is not an option.” Somebody send the Haver Currins to this douche’s house.
[1]

Crystal Leww: Luke James possesses the amazing ability of making a song with such generic lyrics that they could be generic sound so specific and so painful. His voice just sounds like honesty. James repeats the same lines again and again, but each time those lines are delivered differently. “Options” totally immerses, so much that I found myself needing to lie down and catch my breath and take a couple of Advil. Rick Ross is terrible, but even he can’t ruin any part that doesn’t involve him.
[7]

Alfred Soto: The dude playing the moist and overwrought still point of sensitivity is its novelty, and I suppose we should be grateful, right? I can’t figure out if Ross is playing the guy from whom women should flee. Certainly artists looking for more involved cameos should.
[2]

Anthony Easton: I think this could be safely divided into two or three songs: the ballad, and the more hip hop-oriented back end. The ballad itself is quite lovely, but nothing unusual, and the rapping has skill but not a lot of flavour. The advantage of splitting into two is that the blandness isn’t compounded. 
[3]

Normally I’d write some sort of clever and/or snarky intro to these folks, but I really can’t outdo “BIG DATA is a paranoid electronic music project from the Internet”…

[Video][Website]
[4.70]

Mark Sinker: The Matrix ft. Ross Geller as Neo. 
[3]

David Sheffieck: “Joywave” sounds like someone tried to update “joycore” from a decade-back blog era, and “Dangerous” sounds like whatever they’re attempting failed miserably. Shrill and mechanical, there’s nothing the least bit joyful about this song – and I’d feel guilty for fixating on the misnomer except there’s seemingly nothing else it has to offer. Admittedly, my college radio station that loved Dandy Warhols’ turn toward irrelevancy would’ve played the hell outta this.
[4]

Patrick St. Michel: Imagine a jittery Phoenix singing vaguely about government surveillance. Imagine a solid enough groove backed by lyrics that in theory should be interesting but in execution feel too pleased with themselves (“get it, we are talking about computers”). Imagine this song with a minute and a half cut off.
[5]

Thomas Inskeep: They think they’re Phoenix. They’re not.
[3]

Josh Love: Hits the same sweet spot as Phantogram’s “Fall in Love” or SOHN’s “Artifice” for me — a faceless artist catching hold of a nice, meaty groove.
[7]

Brad Shoup: I hear Win Butler’s voice in spots, and there’s a boast on the chorus no one believes. But the bass is filthy and the groove legit, so this must be the real deal.
[7]

Anthony Easton: This does some nice tricks with the vocals, but I am not sure to what end. It isn’t exactly repetitive, but it seems unambitious. 
[5]

Megan Harrington: You dudes do realize that you’ve created content to be shared via Google and Facebook and sold by Apple, right? You know that “Dangerous” is nothing but a Trojan horse for corporations to add your listeners to their own big data matrices, right? And so you’d agree with my assessment that this trifle is nothing but highly ironic sighing, right?
[2]

Will Adams: There is no you, there is only watered down Nine Inch Nails.
[5]

Katherine St Asaph: God, why does every bro with a modicum of awareness of tech and surveillance suddenly think he’s Julian Assange? The lyrics are paranoid but but hardly polemic; if anti-surveillance is really what people are responding to here, let’s replace three-quarters of its rock airplay with The Future’s Void. The video is yet another disingenuous instance of social-commentary-via-showing-viewers-boobs (as in, there’s a point where someone writes “BOOBS” on a whiteboard, in case you think I’m reading anything into anything). As a dance-rock song, “Dangerous” is fine and probably refreshing on the radio. As anything else, it’s ridiculous.
[6]

And not a single mention of Pharrell trolling the world in the intro…

[Video][Website]
[6.64]

Mark Sinker: More entries in the MJ-mask parade: more evidence you now wear it on the dancefloor subtly to signal (at a minimum) informed uncertainty. The sound’s a glinting dress-up for half a dozen high-age disco-pop moments — backing voices even singing a soul makossa shape as echo of an echo, its words as urgent-seeming as they’re teasingly hard to make out — and then Nicki, not exactly cock-blocking but not exactly not. 
[8]

Megan Harrington: Haunted by “Happy,” chafed by “Come Get it Bae” and never bewitched by “Blurred Lines,” I feel like I’ve been waiting since the days of Neptunes past for Pharrell’s genius to merge with the interpreter it deserves. Mercifully, Pharrell is nothing but a spectre here, a golden cage housing Usher and Nicki in their glittering splendor. I imagine them as a platonic duo, out on the town. In the darkness of the club, Usher spots a girl worth getting to know better (“She was up tonight to get down”) but in the middle of the dancefloor Nicki’s hit friction (“Don’t be like OJ and forget ya glove”). Then the spotlight hits Usher’s girl and surprise! It’s Nicki! She giggles at us fools. Until next time, motherfuckers. 
[9]

Anthony Easton: The way Nicki Minaj sings “come on” is kind of amazing, she has one of the best flows in the business, and the horns are even better. Also, Usher doesn’t embarrass himself, and this has an exciting energy with a solid argument for female autonomy. Can this be song of the summer? 
[8]

Josh Love: It’s probably too late for this to jump up and grab the “song of the summer” crown, which is a shame because producer Pharrell refines the best qualities of 2013’s anointed duo, “Blurred Lines” and “Get Lucky.” Elastic, kinetic disco-funk that nods simultaneously at Gaye and Chic while upgrading its vocalist and guest emcee from last year’s aforementioned smashes. Nicki in particular sounds great here, delivering 2014’s sickest burn: “He only lasts six seconds like a Vine.”
[8]

Brad Shoup: She should’ve got “Good Kisser,” not this precisely rendered bore. Everything colorshifts when Nicki shows up, #visualizing a song that can handle the way she says “men?” If you’re going to do disco, please stop hiring Spotify tribute bands; if you’re going to show off your vocal takes, go solo.
[4]

Alfred Soto: As a vehicle for Usher’s astonishing vocal prowess — which gets more impressive every year — it’s unimpeachable. Forget Justin Timberlake: this guy can sing. But he can’t pick singles. For every “Climax” and “Good Kisser,” there’s “Scream” and this, gyrating for the sake of the “Blurred Lines” crowd.
[5]

Crystal Leww: Don’t call him a trendchaser; Looking 4 Myself had the wonderful “Twisted,” released almost a full year before Robin Thicke spent the summer of 2013 atop the charts with “Blurred Lines.” In some alternate universe, Usher was the king of 2013, so “She Came to Give It to You” in the summer of 2014 is a nice consolation prize. “Blurred Lines” was not great for the politics of female agency, but here, Usher is all about how she came to give it to him. But as much time as we can spend parsing lyrics, the tangible reality of “She Came to Give It to You” is how Usher continues to support the career of Nicki Minaj. Again, don’t call him a trend chaser; “Lil Freak” was on Raymond v. Raymond before Kanye ever rap-canonized her. On “She Came to Give It to You,” she’s given space to be Nicki Minaj, flirting and voice shifting like only she can, and ending with a definitive punchline: “He only lasts six seconds like a Vine.” It’s colder than anything you’ve heard all year, short of her interlude on the “Boss Ass Bitch” remix. I like Pharrell a lot, but his place in the background woo-ing is the right place for him. Usher and Nicki are here.
[9]

Katherine St Asaph: Why so presumptuous? Maybe she came to listen to the S.O.S. Band. Usher’s career in 2014 is as disjointed as a satire-news homepage no one expects you to see all of: half the time he’s awesome and the other half he barely trumps Professor Green.
[4]

Scott Mildenhall: “Just Be Good to Me” is too indelible for such a near-wholesale lift not to jar. Take a little bit less and it might be fine, but with verses solely comprising snatched melody it feels axiomatic that they should lead into the original chorus, and that sets up a big fall for when they don’t. But in a world where Jam & Lewis had never met, “She Came to Give It to You” would still be far from spectacular.
[5]

Will Adams: Usher attempting to imitate Pharrell’s guide vocal is a modern-day pop tragedy. Extra point for Nicki, who, despite her brief feature, manages to pump some air into this deflated balloon of a song.
[5]

Kat Stevens: I appear to be at a cocktail party in the sleek modernist lounge on Tracey Island. I can see the palms gently waving through the widescreen windows. The sun is setting and Jeff is fixing old fashioneds for everyone in the far corner of the room. Scott and Gordon are playing pool. Scott is winning, as usual. Everyone is secretly pleased that it’s Alan’s turn in space and John is down here with us, carefully and quietly constructing joints on the glass coffee table, with its chrome rim glinting as the sun dips onto the horizon. I watch him absent-mindedly, sat in an orange egg-shaped swivel chair, listening to Virgil tell an anecdote about that time he went clubbing in Zagreb with the Hood. Before he can get to the punchline, Lady Penelope interrupts with a gentle manicured tap on my shoulder, beckoning me to one of the stalls in the huge bathroom, where Nicki Minaj is waiting. She flicks a switch and the vanity mirror flips round to reveal a smooth steel chute, gently sloping downwards into a dark abyss. There’s a low humming noise of engines ticking over, patiently waiting to spring into action. Nicki silently gestures to the sparkling uniform hanging to the left. I mentally write off my plans for Monday AND Tuesday.
[8]

On our sixth podcast Daniel Montesinos-Donaghy and Sonya Nicholson talk 2NE1, Taeyang, f(x), Alt-J and Grimes while disagreeing on most of the finer points thereof.

Download it here: (47:30, MP3)

Low quality – 23.0 Mb
High quality – 53.1 Mb

Listen to our previous podcasts here, or grab them from the iTunes store.

Here’s what we played and talked about:

How your singer-songwriters are launched today: “I am so thankful to Doritos…“

[Video][Website]
[3.67]

Katherine St Asaph: If you’d told me seven years ago that in 2014 the dominant singer-songwriter instruments wouldn’t be solo piano or solo acoustic guitar but handclaps and percussion, I’d have wanted to skip to the future right away. Some future. Sarah McLachlan circa 1993 would have foregrounded the distortion. 
[4]

Thomas Inskeep: Wikipedia says this song “showcases lush acoustics and folk-driven vocal [sic].” Recommended for people who find Sara Bareilles too edgy. What utter twee bullshit. 
[1]

Alfred Soto: He should have lit a fire under her. 
[4]

Will Adams: The pregnant pauses between verse and chorus suggest something major is about to happen, but instead there’s just a slight uptick in momentum. “The Fire” is pretty, but the effort for a slow-burning build flattened the dynamics.
[5]

Anthony Easton: It would have been a lot safer if he put out a fire in front of her. That would be totally romantic. I would marry someone if they did.
[3]

Brad Shoup: Less a song than an extended round, “The Fire” is recorded well — those claps pop from the background — but at a slower tempo than a swoon demands. The guitar counterpoint in the refrain yearns to be an earworm, but this is a vocal showcase, alas.
[5]

Feel his intensity.

[Video][Website]
[4.89]

Abby Waysdorf: I first heard this song on a radio station that plays both former and current Top 40; I’m frequently unfamiliar with past hits in this country, so I assumed this was an older song I’d missed. As I kept hearing it, though, I realized it was a new song that just sounded like The Alarm. Via, of course, all the contemporary permutations of Celtic-folkish-indie, and from a Dutch singer-songwriter rather than an Anglo/Irish conglomeration of haircuts. Nothing groundbreaking, but with a power and propulsion that makes it stand out from its reference points and contemporaries. A football chant gone moody, with a precise military thump and almost-acapella chorus, easy to remember and get swept up in. While I might have been surprised as to when and where it came from, that it’s a hit from somewhere is obvious at the first refrain.
[7]

Anthony Easton: He was born in Israel, is Dutch, and has worked in Nigeria for Amnesty International. The concept of home is such a fucked-up broken concept, especially with dealing with nationalisms, and though this is supposed to be inspirational, the concept, and Dotan’s history, makes it sound so anthemic that I cannot help but think of something sinister. 
[4]

Kat Stevens: If Adventure Time is anything to go by, the standard of children’s television is pretty damn high these days. Therefore I have my doubts whether this gritty reboot of The Littlest Hobo will get past the preview screenings.
[4]

Alfred Soto: I’ve no tolerance for this intense, overdubbed, and no doubt bearded melancholy. The “home” metaphor sounds especially tired from the mouths of man babes.
[3]

David Sheffieck: If it wasn’t bad enough for a song to go Lumineers-by-way-of-Bastille, the song has to be called “Home”? I guess, at least, this is useful if in a decade someone wants to illustrate the two most overused trends of the past few years in one three-minute track. Wait, this stretches to four and a half?
[2]

Scott Mildenhall: Two singles called “Home” have come out in the UK this week, both with different, clear angles on homecoming. Leah McFall “clicks her heels” to escape a dystopian landscape deserted by Edward Sharpe, while Naughty Boy lazes in every sense towards a late summer weariness. The theme is there in each case, and it’s a key this lacks – Dotan could easily have called it “Going Down The Shops”. Wind, fire, rivers – not home, but a bunch of loose signifiers looking for better vocals, lyrics and instrumentation.
[4]

Megan Harrington: I’ve always been very fortunate to have a home and to feel that sense of belonging. Even when I felt implicitly unwelcome at school sleepovers or stressed out on vacation, I knew I was lucky to feel home so strongly that its absence, even temporarily, was upsetting. Dotan is playing our emotions like a snare hit in time with a heartbeat, but I can only imagine that if you don’t have a home, or you’ve been displaced, the search must sound a little like this song. It’s a mixture of clear-eyed pride, a pure and noble pursuit, and the swirling confusion of nighttime. A song as earnest as “Home,” that looks you in the eyes without flinching, can be an easy target for ridicule. I can’t help but look back, and I hear an anthem.  
[8]

Brad Shoup: The album’s called 7 Layers, so I can only imagine what the other six ingredients of Dotan’s doom-folk burrito could be.
[5]

Katherine St Asaph: There’s a scene in Michael Gentry’s Little Blue Men (SPOILERS AHOY FOR ANYONE WHO IS THEORETICALLY GOING TO PLAY AN INTERACTIVE FICTION GAME BASED ON A JUKEBOX BLURB FOR A SONG ABOUT DUTCH TOLKIEN-SWELLPOP) where you escape your Dilbertian brainwash prison for something that turns out to be yet another brainwash prison: “In the valley below, young men and women in wispy robes frolic chastely about, dancing together amongst the wildflowers and the romping sheep. Everyone is laughing. Everyone has a pretty pink balloon that they hold by its string. It is innocence and carefree, everywhere you look. Also, you notice immediately, you are naked. Completely naked. This doesn’t bother you as much as part of you thinks it should.” It’s supposed to be a horror ending, but doesn’t it sound so pretty? Pretending it doesn’t is like pretending I don’t find “Home” core-to-the-bones stirring: the proper response, the total lie.
[7]

I think they’ve covered everything except playing with it and eating it.

[Video][Website]
[3.33]

Alfred Soto: This song zoomed 40-1 on the American country chart and all I can think of is this tune.
[4]

Stephen Thomas Erlewine: FGL ruled country in 2013 with party songs plus that one ballad–all single about girls and good times, so the time is ripe for the duo to prove that think about serious things, such as this great land of ours from which all good things come. This slow, studied sobriety isn’t the only distinctive thing about “Dirt.” The other, the one with short hair, sings a verse but he along with his fellow are both overshadowed by JD Souther spouting off such nonsense as “You don’t have to see the world to be worldly. Just raise some good children and bake good enough pies and the world will come right to your kitchen window.” This is straight-up bullshit coming from a singer/songwriter who fled to LA the first chance he got but it suits a song that rhapsodizes new constructions that can be bought with 10% down. Like a McMansion, it’s all facade: it might look good at a distance but even a cursory glance reveals the shoddy construction that will make it seem older than dirt within a years time.
[3]

Katherine St Asaph: I am six years old and I am going to ruin this song for you. Suppose the title, “dirt,” is a frat-bro studio Easter egg, and the whole song is a double entendre. Press play, ponder lines like “you get your hands in it, plant your roots in it.” Get yourself well and good into that juvenile mindset. Now imagine: The entire song is one big grandly paced buildup to “you know, you can’t fuck it.”
[1]

Anthony Easton: I wonder how much of this track will sell to people who grew up in parking lots and concrete and only drove in dirt from bible study to Wal Mart to school. I want to hear the stories of those, more than the (quite well written, a little musically anemic) ode to the same old nostalgia. 
[6]

Patrick St. Michel: This is a song that requires you to watch the video, because without the additional storyline this is literally a song about dirt. Yet unlike similar songs focused on specific elements, this is as boring as…well, you know. 
[2]

Megan Harrington: These lyrics sound so badly lost in translation. How did this go from being a “build your love on” dirt song to a “I’m in love with” dirt song? The sickly background vocals are so bizarre they’re almost hilarious, the word “dirt” cooed like it’s your baby’s nickname. Florida Georgia Line are on the verge of becoming the most misunderstood band since Creed. 
[3]

Brad Shoup: You also name your Alice in Chains records after it. This has the determined paddle of the Mountain Goats’ “Against Pollution,” but only one man’s bray lands the cross. It’s a triumph of country songwriting, assuming that the writer(s) didn’t pencil in a guy whispering “dirt“.
[5]

Edward Okulicz: Yeah, we get it, dirt is life. You came from it (sex education really must be bleak where these dudes come from) and you’ll return to it, and ostensibly live on it in the middle of those two things. But evidently you can’t celebrate it; musically, this is as stodgy as it comes. Weirdly, they sing “dirt” with the fondness I normally reserve for a sandwich with three different kinds of meat on it. Dare I say this is what the narrator in “Fly Over States” is thinking when he’s being told how great it is to settle down?
[4]

Crystal Leww: This is what authenticity sounds like!!!!!1!
[2]