UK country duo, named like the bro varietal but not…

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[5.00]

Jonathan Bogart: All the hellraising and shitkicking of a lace doily onto which the butler has not spilled a drop of madam’s tea.
[3]

Thomas Inskeep: Strong vocal harmonies, solid production, but a bit lacking in the personality department.
[5]

Brad Shoup: Nothing about the song hints at its English provenance, but there are a couple odd details just the same — the intro and chorus suggest power pop. And then there’s the title: an American act would probably write a whole night-out story from it. But it’s just a stray compliment in the refrain: “life and soul” is the hook. There’s more than a little Linda Ronstadt here.
[6]

Iain Mew: It feels impossible to go wrong with such a dead-on rendering of a classic sound, each pedal steel interjection and backing vocal placed with immaculate precision. It’s just difficult to go very right with it either, when it’s so easy to let the song slip over and when there’s not enough there to hook onto its story and emotion.
[6]

Alfred Soto: I don’t get the chorus: if there’s something about “him” that they can’t put their fingers on, then why put him on the top of the guest list? What if he farts in public? The closely tracked harmonies don’t budge. He belongs.
[4]

Anthony Easton: Reminds me of pre-Red Taylor with more twang, especially in how they open up their vowels. Are we ready for a nostalgia cycle that is less than five years? 
[4]

Madeleine Lee: “Guest List” paints in broad strokes the way an idealized road trip feels, with the sun high in the sky, the open road ahead of you and green and yellow fields moving past. It’s not a specific image nor a personal one, but it’s enough to remind me of the personal and specific memory I have of that feeling, or blank enough for me to project onto, at least, and that’s enough for me to like it.
[7]

I can’t find a photo of these two ever actually together, so here’s Tinashe with a bunch of Pokeballs…

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[6.43]Alfred Soto: I lost interest after a couple minutes. Her presentation is hardening into a manner. Intervention needed.
[3]

Katherine St Asaph: I think I’ll always be a fan of pop music, but I’ll doubt I’ll ever be a fan of pop stars, at least not in the Media Fandom sense that’s been the Trojan Horse for their being talked about in the music press. It’s a certain performative sort of fandom, less a fan of the artists than the Strong Female Characters they resemble in soundbites. It retcons entire discographies, relegating conflicted songs like “Russian Roulette” and “Disturbia” and “Sweet Dreams” to second tier. Everything has to be confident, a conscription-via-song into a war of who loves themselves the loudest. Vulnerable singles exist, and fans clearly connect to them (exhibit A: Lana Del Rey’s career), but the only way Media Fandom knows to parse them is C-O-N-F-I-D-E-N-T-THAT’S-ME, and the effect is jarring. Media Fandom calls Selena Gomez’s “Good For You” sexyflirtyawesome rather than a requiem in male gaze minor; to Media Fandom, “Party Favors” is seductively fierce. The song is something else entirely. Like “Run Away With Me,” “Party Favors” is constructed on an off-key synth; unlike “Run Away With Me,” there’s no way the drunkard’s walk around the pitch was accidental, it’s too pronounced. The beat lurches and stumbles. Each section of the track is a non-sequitur against the last. Tinashe’s chorus sounds like she’s singing to herself, but she’s not; she’s talking to some guy (“what you feeling like?”) and whiplashing between narcissism (“I feel like I could fucking kiss the moon,” “I’m the truth”) and incoherent fear (“I’m so dizzy, they can’t save me, I’m gone.”) She compares a dude to a bowl of ramen. She compares a dude to a bowl of ramen. There’s only one time where all this surfaces, this emotional lability, hyperawareness of being watched, obsession with how high you are right now, fixation on hangover broth: it’s when you’re so wasted that the only moral response to your offering someone “party favors” — an icky pun — is for them to call you a cab and text you to make sure you got home OK. This is where critics are supposed to stop and check themselves for being patronizing, and no, I don’t have a better answer to why “Party Favors” feels exploitative while “Can’t Feel My Face” does not except pre-existing gender dynamics. But I cannot imagine any other interpretation of the song. Every element seems so deliberate, so perfectly crafted to make this scenario as vivid as possible. And it’s consistent, at least, with “Pretend” and “All Hands on Deck,” even “2 On.” It’s just not a scenario I like revisiting, even less when I’m told it’s fun.
[5]

Jonathan Bogart: Drunken, or otherwise narcotically altered, beats and melodies and phrasing have been enjoying popularity in the 2010s for reasons I’ll leave to the pop-sociologists. But the reason why people make them seems to have increasingly less to do with Brave Artistic Choices and more that it’s a cheap and easy way to infuse your music with Meaning, the same reason comics and movies and TV shows “go dark.” Expressing — and maybe feeling — the full range of human emotional experience is too hard. Let’s just wallow forever.
[7]

Daisy Le Merrer: A real missed opportunity. Past that great hypnotic loop, the production is filled with little off-putting details like a strangely goofy bass on the intro and pre-chorus. Tinashe still has that dark sexy stoned in the club thing down, and Young Thug does his thing on automatic, which is at this stage in his career still sufficient. They’re an obviously great pair, but you wish their performances were really intermingled; it sounds like they’ve never met IRL.
[6]

Micha Cavaseno: Tinashe has opted not to hand us another “All Hands on Deck”-styled mediocrity after radio has re-embraced her but instead provides a song that sounds like lemon haze and ice cream goo. It starts off loopy, with this incredible dork trying to kiss moons and steal girls, and her newfound accomplice Thugger Thugger whoops and cheers her on shoulder-devil style.
[8]

Ramzi Awn: It’s hard to describe “Party Favors.” It might suffice to say that it’s an obvious 10. It might be helpful to point out that it’s stacked with layers, or that Tinashe’s higher register is slinky like no joke. It might do it justice to say that the “hook” is as slow and as hard as it gets (if you can call it a hook.) But all that can really be said about “Party Favors” with certainty is that whatever Tinashe’s bringing to the party — you want to try it.
[10]

Brad Shoup: Do artists not host anymore? The poor soul throwing this bash gets usurped by Tinashe, tottering around the duplex, playing this thing she just learned on the melodica, handing out snacks. At least her friend seems pretty cool.
[6]

The voice of “I Could Be the One,” not that you’d know from the credits…

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[5.86]

Scott Mildenhall: If Tegan and Sara were to mould a logical follow-up to Heartthrob on the industrial clamour of Depeche Mode tracks like “People Are People” and “Everything Counts”, Noonie Bao would be able to sue them for plagiarism. She would do, too, because unlike on “I Could Be The One” she’s lending no-one a hand here, and doesn’t want one either. It’s the polar opposite sentiment, but almost as powerful: grandstanding from the pinnacle in a kevlar body suit that’s a sonic metaphor as much as anything else. When “Pyramids” kicks in, it’s metallic, ironclad and hammering at will.
[8]

Jonathan Bogart: It is 2015, and anthemic is the enemy of emotion.
[5]

Thomas Inskeep: Winningly combines glossy Swedish pop with a mid-’80s new wave feel and delightful lyrics: “So if somebody tryin’ to take me out/Better not be scared of heights,” she warns.
[6]

Anthony Easton: This sounds like it could end up being on a remake of a remake of Miami Vice-style ’80s cop soundtracks, but when we stopped being so serious. 
[5]

Katherine St Asaph: The world may not need another song about time-traveling Egyptian strip club courtesans, but it certainly doesn’t need another metaphor for vague triumph.
[4]

Brad Shoup: I love the creeping pizzicato beat, and the composed confidence in the central Illuminatish metaphor. My jury’s out on all the percussion.
[7]

David Sheffieck: Bao’s thin voice, keening and twisty, remains her strongest tool. The hook multitracks her into anonymity: thudding and straightforward, it only really works when incorporated into the round-style outro. She shines on the verses and – especially – the bridge, where a lighter hand allows her distinctive charm to show through; ultimately, they’re not quite enough.
[6]

Does not do exactly what it says on the tin.

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[5.00]

Jonathan Bogart: Boy looks at Charli XCX and Lorde. Boy thinks, “hey, I could do that.” Labels give him way more support and a stronger push than they’ve ever given similarly-positioned women.
[2]

Alfred Soto: Rather tepid for this Miguel/Weeknd arrangement. Fuck it — let’s call it “Tepid.”
[4]

Thomas Inskeep: I was skeptical considering his background as a “YouTube star,” but Sivan’s got some chops, and smart taste in collaborators. Producer and co-writer Alex Hope has worked with plenty of other Aussie pop stars, and Sivan himself has a good feel for lyrics. There’s a lot of teenage ache-cum-angst in his vocals (he just turned 20, so he’s allowed), so I believe him when he sings “Never knew lovin’ could hurt this good” over surging electropop beats, which mitigate but never overwhelm the song’s wistfulness. 
[7]

Brad Shoup: It could be anyone singing on this; Sivan sighs like that’s a distinguishing characteristic. It’s pretty chill though, like a Peter Bjorn & John comedown track.
[6]

Edward Okulicz: For a while last year, there was a 2-metre advertisement with Sivan’s face on it near one of the entrances to Town Hall station in Sydney. By contrast, his blase affect (possibly ironic given the title) is surprisingly tiny. It’s an affect that works out of a female popstar but just sounds unengaged from a dude. Not that the song gives him much to do with.
[4]

Scott Mildenhall: He sings of being wild, but sounds more like he’s thinking about being wild, how they made him feel wild, and the attendant complications highlighted by the video, which is very hard to extricate from the song when listening. They both form part of a wider concept (still being drip-fed to fans in a 2015 fashion), and it all ties together, right down to the carefree child chorus running through. As a result, those shouts actually become haunting; at the very least melancholic. Sivan doesn’t sound wild any more, he’s remembering being so. If he is wild, it’s only at wild’s loss, and his vocal limitations lend themselves to suggestions of sincerity that make the juxtaposition of him and that youthful joy into something beautifully puncturing.
[8]

Will Adams: Hey, that Years & Years album was pretty good, wasn’t it? Gotta revisit that.
[4]

Minus 5 points for not being a Rachel Stevens cover.

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[5.78]

Iain Mew: “Dumb dumb dumb dumb” rhymes with “Rum Pum Pum Pum” and it’s very much the equivalent — ebullient, confident, naggingly catchy, and barely a hint at the heights of the accompanying album.
[7]

Micha Cavaseno: I just don’t know; the brashy speed-run soul embellishments on the verses remind me of the worst parts of “Problem,” the chorus with its almost Andrews Sisters-like earworm has some staying power, but then we end up with that ABYSMAL Michael Jackson-themed rap and the pointless EDM-beatswitch. A lot of this just feels undercooked compared to the debut EP’s rock solid singles. Hard to say what’s going wrong, but I doubt Red Velvet will suffer too much in the long run.
[3]

Thomas Inskeep: Horn-y, hyper-caffeinated K-pop spiced liberally with schoolyard chants but, unfortunately, little else. 
[4]

Jonathan Bogart: Not dumb enough.
[6]

Patrick St. Michel: Add “Dumb Dumb” to the pantheon of K-Pop songs highlighting the general smartness of the industry. It’s clearly inspired by “Bang Bang” — down to the monosyllabic title — but taken in a bunch of exciting new directions over the course of its run time, like nobody in the production meeting could decide on one idea and just stuck them all in. As scatterbrained as it gets, though, the end result is a really catchy song…which is how you could describe a lot of pop out of Korea over the last few years. It would almost be a bit predictable if it weren’t for moments of genuine wonder, like the rap interlude made up of nothing but Michael Jackson puns.
[7]

Alfred Soto: Those giddy ascending vocal parts! And video game sonics to match! More more more!
[7]

Will Adams: Despite its best efforts to sneak up on me in the middle of the day and drill right into my brain, “Bang Bang” never won me over. “Dumb Dumb” takes the same kitchen sink approach but distributes its pyrotechnics more evenly between vocals and music, which is the only way I can explain away the six random measures of trance in the bridge. Each listen, I can’t decide whether the song’s fascinating or annoying.
[5]

Brad Shoup: Constant scales and rises, goosed with sax excerpts (some Meghan Trainor, some “GDFR”). It ran me so ragged I could barely appreciate the MJ section.
[5]

Mo Kim: The verses are all escalating action, rising pitches and woozy 808 beats and “baby-baby-baby-baaaaaabes” drawled out Valley Girl style. The chorus mashes its disparate elements together into prime traffic jam pop: SM has been experimenting with how many cooks they can get away with employing in the same kitchen, and this may be the agency’s high point to date, synthesizing the brashness of f(x) with the cohesion of SHINEE and the sweetness of Girls’ Generation. Songs about being dumbstruck by love are rarely composed with such intelligence, nor are they embodied as playfully as Red Velvet manage here.
[8]

Live Forever… in mediocrity, that is.

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[3.14]

Patrick St. Michel: Remember a few years ago when it sounded like every pop song on the radio was about living forever and dancing all night and let’s party like we are going to die? A lot of those efforts were bad, but not because of the theme alone. Rather, they sounded forced and, ultimately, nothing like actually being young, which is far more complex than a lot of artists portray it as. “Live Forever” is ultimately just really boring, and would only be a good soundtrack to being young if you were making a scrapbook or something. 
[3]

Jonathan Bogart: They’ve always traded in big, obvious emotions, but the complete 180, both production-wise and conceptually, from “If I Die Young” is still something of a shock.
[4]

Thomas Inskeep: Oh, this is disappointing. After the gleefully chaotic Pioneer (which also happened to feature one of the best singles of this decade, the high-country-goth “Better Dig Two”), the Band Perry return with this unappetizing slab of warmed-up corned beef. “Live Forever” somehow pulls off the trick of simultaneously sounding twee and like a track from ESPN Jock Jams 37.
[3]

Alfred Soto: In 1985 a whoa-oh chorus nodded towards Italo-disco. In 2015, it means someone’s listening to One Direction listening to Def Leppard. The Band Perry add banjo.
[4]

David Sheffieck: If only they’d dreamed of a song with a tempo that was less deadening.
[3]

Brad Shoup: Thin and unconvincing. All the juice is bottled until the chorus, around which Kimberly Perry huffs about ships and dreams next to placeholder acoustic. That Lady Gaga album can’t come soon enough for RedOne.
[2]

Will Adams: The verses are a slog to be endured for an only-average chorus, which takes woah-oh shouty hooks from this year and “WE’RE IMMORTAL” sentiment from three years ago.
[3]

“Yeah, you need the video…”

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[5.09]

Katherine St Asaph: GDFR: God Damn Fucking Retreads.
[3]

Madeleine Lee: It’s not as “GDFR” as UNIQ, since the more popular you get, the less derivative you have to be, but it’s not original enough to overcome the comparison. It’s more staid than “Fun Boys,” but it compensates with a stronger chorus and funny career-drag costumes, so that’s fine. It got to “jjeoreo” faster than GD&T.O.P did, as expected of a group with their ears closer to the ground than to the top floor of the YG building, but T.O.P saying “Francis Bacon in my kitchen” is brilliant, and Rap Monster’s yukpo joke is belaboured. Basically, it doesn’t go far enough one way or the other. I will readily agree that BTS are dope, but “Dope” is not as inventive, or cool, or even as unlistenable and cheesy as I know they can be.
[6]

Jessica Doyle: So the song is an homage to working hard. The video (yeah, you need the video, the song doesn’t do much on its own) throws in: cosplay; Rap Monster as ringmaster and occasional tempo controller; J-Hope being 140 percent limbs; Jungkook making big eyes at the camera; various random kicks and finger-guns; Jimin beginning to strip; more cosplay; all of them running madly in one direction for no good reason. In other words, it is BTS 101. It is not the quickest way to convert an innocent bystander from mild amusement to all-caps despair (that’s this video), but should you ever end up trapped in an elevator with the despairing, this will help you understand what afflicts them.
[5]

Jonathan Bradley: Do sax whines justify unearned swagger any better? No, but since when should swagger be earned?
[7]

Thomas Inskeep: BTS’s The Most Beautiful Moment in Life, Pt. 1 is one of my favorite records of the year — but this is my least favorite track on it, largely because it goes hard for an EDM-pop sound. Larded with that ultra-fake EDM sax and a bunch of needless builds and drops, this goes nowhere. 
[4]

Patrick St. Michel: The janky sax can be forgiven, as “Dope” is as tightly constructed as any big-time K-Pop number. Yet it’s sorta weird listening to a song glorifying the intense work conditions of the industry, and tough to get pumped to lyrics such as “even if our youth rots in the studio/thanks to that, we’re closer to success.” Like, congrats on your dance moves and “hustle life,” but it still feels like I’m listening to a future labor case.
[5]

David Sheffieck: The attitude and propulsion of the verses is plenty compelling, particularly with the limber way the production shifts for each and the way each vocalist builds precisely to the pre-chorus. But can we please just throw that saxophone sound down a deep well and collectively agree to never speak of it again?
[5]

Alfred Soto: “I Need You” was such a sumptuous bump ‘n’ grind that I knew it was a fluke, and the wannabe hard rapping on “Dope” is as gauche as the horn hook. 
[5]

Jonathan Bogart: Hair-metal conviction with EDM dynamics, and less fun than that sounds. I do like the sax sample being tortured to death.
[4]

Mo Kim: I’m not sitting in the dining hall at 1am on a Sunday evening because I didn’t try hard enough. I had work on Saturday morning, then a friend dropped by on Saturday afternoon, and then a truly wicked headache hit me and I had to lie down for several (ten) hours. College is scary, the constant pressure to measure up and temptation to dress down hitting like a one-two punch, but this world isn’t new to me. Like many Korean high school kids, some of whom today have “Dope” as their morning alarm or their ringtone or their running playlist opener, I grew up surrounded by adults and media figures telling me the only thing that gave me worth was my work, grew up seeing a lot of my friends losing their ideals or their self-confidence or both. On one level, BTS is operating on this boilerplate premise of work as a tangible, but on another they’re reframing it. It’s a song where work ethic is connected to the flourishing of an inner self rather than its loss, the beginnings of empowerment rather than its end: “I’ll do this differently from the other guys, [it’s] my style,” Jungkook asserts in the first eight bars, while rapper SUGA raps about watching his “youth rot away” like he’s waiting for something else to grow out of that fertilized ground. It’s a club song that shits on people who go clubbing, the pre-chorus boasting of “working all night every day” while you were busy partying it up, and that “Thrift Shop” riff may be cheap, but it’s celebratory nonetheless, the fruit of hard labor. Sure, “Dope” is accusatory and a little over-sincere and more than a little in poor taste given what job prospects look like in Seoul right now. But fuck measuring success in jobs, fuck the adults who hold them above kids’ heads while judging them for jumping too low, and fuck anybody who thinks they can take your work and all that it means away from you. This was written for us, not them. Feel free to dance.
[7]

Brad Shoup: [flo rida voice] IT’S GOIN’ DOWN FOR FUNSIES
[5]

Let’s retire to the bedroom-club-mobile…

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[7.67]

Josh Winters: It’s almost scientific fact that the three best places to hear music are at the club, in the car, and in your bedroom. To Kelela, these settings are one and the same, so she superimposes them and their associate emotions into a brisk late-night summer jam. As with someone who contains multitudes, this kind of action naturally results in some internal conflict; the Miami bass beat goes from pause to fast-forward at the press of a finger with her coy desire following suit, compelling enough to manipulate time in order to get all up in her feelings. These opposing aspects work wonderfully together as they fight for the spotlight, making “Rewind” the quintessential showcase for Kelela.
[10]

Patrick St. Michel: Pitch-shifted vocals and skittery tempos pop up so frequently in music now (errr, maybe I need to edit my SoundCloud feed), that it’s genuinely surprising to hear someone use them to signify time bending. Kelela does just that on “Rewind,” and the rush of longing that practically slows and speeds up time is shaped in just a way for maximum impact.
[8]

Thomas Inskeep: Ooooooh. Kelela goes from the Arca-produced wooziness of “A Message” to the ’90s bass of “Rewind,” combining jewel-like synth tones with an early-Janet coo and a track that’s totally Ghost Town DJ’s. I hope Jermaine Dupri hears this and is as flattered as he should be, because “Rewind” owes much of its DNA to him. A subtle stunner.
[9]

Jonathan Bogart: I never thought I’d hear a song where the glassy keyboard sound that defined adult-contemporary schlock in the ’80s and ’90s could be rehabilitated, but I guess you live long enough and people who are too young to have experienced the Mariah/Whitney/Céline/Richard Marx years as oppressive start to look back in envy.
[9]

Rebecca A. Gowns: Simple, no frills, lying-in-bed jam. In fact, it does remind me of jam: sweet, not fresh per se, but preserved and good for a while. As a song, it’s jam on toast, not a full Monte Cristo — and it doesn’t need to be.
[7]

Katherine St Asaph: In the taxonomy of crush songs, an underused but ever-useful entry is the song for the crush you’ve almost consummated — but only almost. Kelela’s voice flits from tough to vulnerable in a syllable’s span, and there’s space in the production for as much longing as you can imagine in.
[8]

Micha Cavaseno: Kelela writing over more of the Fade To Mind hacks recycling old Atlanta Bass production is more of the same. Her songwriting is a bit rough, but has improved so much from her earlier work, and her vocals also have continued to polish themselves. But now we need to get her producers who aren’t just nerds trying to soundtrack their Geocities Collage Art Projects for the disMag Party.
[6]

Alfred Soto: The decision to sing in a breathy upper register smooths the tensions — it’s not a wise decision. Roisin Murphy would have pushed this minimalist house track into places she might not recognize after she steps away from the mike.
[5]

Brad Shoup: A blue flame, like Zendaya’s “Replay” via a Katy B aesthetic.
[7]

We’re giving up on them…

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[3.20]

Josh Winters: Not actually an anthemic bisexuality ballad but instead a high-school-GSA public service announcement.
[2]

Patrick St. Michel: Cram in as many progressive points as you can, but this is still a very boring after-school special.
[1]

Thomas Inskeep: “Buzzy” because of its lyrics, which first romantically reference a woman and then a man, but otherwise no one would notice. This is essentially Train with a stale trip-hop beat and a C-list rapper who sounds like he’s aping will.i.am, and it might actually be even worse than I’ve made it sound. 
[2]

Jonathan Bogart: Ooh, male pronouns! Too bad the song’s so blandly antiseptic it comes off as Christ-pop rather than sexuality-is-a-spectrum. I look forward to scrambling for the mute button when this starts to swell in an insurance ad.
[3]

Scott Mildenhall: There’s something curiously hymnal about this, especially in the pre-chorus. In particular, when Chad King sings about “him,” he could very easily be referring to Him. Praise be the perceived universality of love, especially when writing a pop song. Essentially these two are Simon & Garfunkel for the Diply generation: trendy vicars making songs for trendy vicars (and, of course, everyone else implicated by their name). They might even have written it after hearing “See You Again” and “Lean On Me” in church, who knows? What’s certain is that it’s pleasant, but not world-changing, exactly how it should be.
[5]

Brad Shoup: Pop is the richest soil for corn. Not schmaltz — that’s the malted version, the kind you can break off and pass around. Corn is the kind of sentiment made for one: solo drives and lipsyncing in the mirror. For whatever reasons, I have a taste for it. “Hold Each Other” has that crotchet piano/boom-blip approach I love — the production team must love it too, since the strings practically have to jump the track to meet it. The melody is fully-realized, strung out with trembling, and when the Worlds run out of words they just sigh “ohhh”. Then there’s the corniest part of all, the supertextual stuff: Chad King singing to a man, Futuristic delivering an entire verse without specifying a gender or even a body type. Even if it feels peculiar to talk about, I’m glad it’s here. 
[10]

Mo Kim: There’s one moment in the song where I think of what could have been, that bit at the end of the chorus where the duo sing “We hold each other” and their voices sound so close to cracking that the line transcends its meaning, the “holding” less a refuge than a flimsy bulwark against the brokenness of the world. Unfortunately, instead of honing in on the heartbreak of that moment, A Great Big Middle School Talent Show chose to bury it under super-twee piano plinks and the most lifeless and loud drum beat this side of Katy Perry.
[4]

Alfred Soto: The strings cushioning the “She keeps my heart from getting older” — hell, the way this Nate Ruess wannabe sings that line — are more terrifying than the gallows.
[2]

Micha Cavaseno: Yeah, that one note guitar noise that sounds like a siren in the production? That’s actually my internal alarm for just how sickly saccharine this song is, and that’s where the one point in my score is coming from. Woooooiiii…..
[1]

Katherine St Asaph: Are we sure he isn’t singing to his adenoids?
[2]

Our first time covering this prolific British singer-songwriter.

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[5.14]

Iain Mew: The rollicking folk-rock sound and the high notes like the twist of a knife both remind me of Tom McRae, a contemporary I liked a lot whose career trajectory has gone the opposite way to Gilmore’s. She gets a better swing going, too, and some great lines to go with it — I love the imagery of the “loyalty card at last chance saloon.” I just wish that the chorus and its sentiment wasn’t so underwhelming.
[6]

Alfred Soto: “Don’t need their idea of heaven” over rolling strings and guitars would sound better from a voice that didn’t evoke Eleanor Friedberger at a senior citizens dinner.
[4]

Micha Cavaseno: Sounds like an attempt at adult contemporary pop ballads in a Brian Setzer style which, hey, points for trying.
[2]

Jonathan Bogart: Neko Case without the bite is something to be.
[6]

Thomas Inskeep: Reminiscent of ’80s UK singer-songwriters like Billy Bragg, Tanita Tikaram, Julia Fordham; there’s even a little bit of Richard Thompson in her pen. Gilmore is well-meaning and boring. The production on “Live Out Loud” is fairly generic, and the song itself doesn’t go much of anywhere. 
[4]

Megan Harrington: Objectively, there’s little to dislike about Thea Gilmore. After two decades, her sound is incredibly smooth. There’s not a note, not a horn chart, not a handclap out of place. The production is rich and expensive sounding, but at the same time, you can hear exactly how she’d play this for a canned studio promo clip. The worst criticism you can level at “Live Out Loud” is that it’s uninspired, which hardly matters because it sounds good. 
[8]

Katherine St Asaph: Stop me if you recognize this: The moment you recommend an artist you love to a friend (or more), start playing one of their songs, and hear nothing but flaws, noodling, uncharitable contexts. It happened last night with Stereolab. It’s happening again with Thea Gilmore, whom I was introduced to as a artisan singer-songwriter never given her due from the press and am now hearing as a BBC Radio 2 staple who records tracks with titles like “Live Out Loud.” The truth’s probably in the middle: comfort-food rock.
[6]