There’s a big umbrella casting shade over an empty chair…

[Video][Website]
[4.09]

Crystal Leww: There’s a side of bro country built on the female fantasy of the sensitive beautiful bro made by boys like Thomas Rhett and Sam Hunt. There’s also bro country built on the male fantasy of how great it is to drink in random places, fuck beautiful girls, and be vindictive and mean to your ex. Dierks Bentley is that kind of bro country.
[2]

Jonathan Bradley: Bro country might have peaked, but Dierks Bentley won’t let it go easily: he’s spent too long getting the moves down. His laconic delivery on the verses is what Jake Owen made sound natural on “Real Life,” and the booze-and-broads fantasy of the chorus is the kind that doesn’t work unless the dudes braying along are as idiotically good-natured as the ones from Florida Georgia Line. (It wouldn’t occur to them to rhyme “body” and “naughty,” and so much the better.) “Drunk on a Plane” was great because it was funny; Dierks insisted heartbreak and economy class made for the hottest party combo since lime met coconut. “Somewhere on a Beach,” however, is more straightforward and so more mean-spirited — his ex shouldn’t think for a second he cared enough to be hung up on her — and, what’s more, I don’t think even he believes what he’s saying.
[4]

Thomas Inskeep: Musically it lopes along amiably, like much of Bentley’s catalog, and its chorus is a sticky hook. But lyrically this is way beneath Bentley’s usual standards: it’s framed as his usual “you left me but I’m better off” shtick, but there’s a nasty undertone here. “She [your replacement]’s got a body/and she’s naughty” implies that his ex didn’t, and it just comes off as kinda mean. I expect better from Bentley, and this ain’t it.
[3]

Patrick St. Michel: Boy, this is just one of the most depressing kiss-off songs I’ve ever heard. Sure, the hook lays out how great everything seems to be going for our narrator — new woman and plenty of drinks in warmer climes. But it unfold at tequila-hangover speed, very little joy coming through in any of his boasts. I mean, he sounds exhausted singing about how little sleep he’s gotten. It’s all too sluggish to be a good time, but turned interesting by the vibe that dude is scribbling all of this on a napkin at the Ramada pool bar. 
[5]

Megan Harrington: I guess I’m just relieved the plane finally landed. 
[3]

Gaya Sundaram: This song is so laidback that Bentley doesn’t even know where exactly he is (“somewhere on a beach”) or even what he’s drinking (“something strong”); the melody is nothing new and the guitar solo barely tries. But there is comfort in familiarity, and that is one reason why this song works. The other is Bentley’s voice.
[6]

Brad Shoup: Some people just can’t be happy. Bentley’s got a nice half-speed groove, and all he can do with it is grouse. His mood infects the track: the drums start to sound cranky, the guitar solo snaps. What a shitty postcard.
[4]

Katherine St Asaph: I already used the “From Cayman Islands With Love” reference on you, Dierks. If you’re going to do the same shit, so am I.
[3]

Jonathan Bogart: Maybe if I hadn’t watched the video I’d be able to take this song as the gooberish but inoffensive child of Jimmy Buffett and post-Gillsburg Skynyrd it is. But the video’s gross and gleeful embrace of colonialist attitudes, patriarchal body-image messaging, and straight-up derision towards the mentally ill makes me sadder and angrier the more I think about it. Telling dumb white fatsos like me that we deserve the love of ethnically ambiguous supermodels for no reason is in great part responsible for the state of the world today, and it’s not getting any better.
[1]

Anthony Easton: The first minute or so of this, with the vaguely surfish guitar, is pleasurable and unguarded — it’s the perfect introduction to how unambitious this whole track is. It’s also much more interesting than most of the other work. I love Dierks’s voice, and the roil of that intro guitar does the work of the lassitude of that voice. I also think he’s trying ever so slightly to do that Sam Hunt speak singing in this, which just doesn’t quite work. All of that said, there are moments here that are genuinely interesting and worth something. (More how he sings “boys,” less how he rhymes “body” with “naughty.”)  
[7]

Alfred Soto: With the exception of last year’s lovely “Say You Will,” Dierks Bentley singles sneak up on me. The beat has molasses in the hips and sex on its mind, the guitar lines as crinkly as the lines around Bentley’s mouth. I’m hedging my bets because the chorus is so damn unimaginative, written and sung as if no one involved had even seen a picture of Cancun.
[7]

Very emergency…

[Video][Website]
[6.11]

Thomas Inskeep: It’s a cute trick to go from “Burning House” to a song about a sinking ship, but unfortunately “Mayday” is one of the weaker tracks on Cam’s superb Untamed, which was my favorite country album of 2015 (in spite of its December release). Much of the album rocks an emphatically ’80s country vibe akin to Rosanne Cash and Juice Newton at their hitmaking peaks. “Mayday” is a bit too understated for its own good, though, walking in place where it should run. Chalk it up as good-not-great and check out the album.
[5]

Crystal Leww: Who is picking Cam’s singles? Half of her album feels fresh and full of life and the other half of the album feels like Cam was kinda sleepy when she recorded it. The greatest irony of a song called “Mayday” is that it sounds like there is no emergency at all. 
[4]

Jonathan Bradley: After “Burning House,” Cam moves to the next crisis. She sets out with an arresting couplet — “You are overbearing; I’m not in love/But I don’t wanna tell you” — and as the toms roll in, it sounds like she might stir up a storm worth all the shipwreck imagery. Enlisting the elements in service of your emotional travails is a well-worn route for a reason, but unless it pays off with a bout of crashing catharsis, what’s the point? “Mayday” levels off about one minute in, making the impending doom and drama seem little more than a false alarm.
[5]

Katherine St Asaph: If this were 1996, “Mayday” would be by Jewel and on mainstream radio; now it’s on country radio, the last home of the whole genre. The #adultpopemergency of the lyric is a teacup tempest — no one’s not letting her leave — and Cam’s voice is thin, though it does make for a nice trailing-off “may…” in the chorus, but I suppose it’s good someone plays this sort of thing.
[6]

Jonathan Bogart: I’m sympathetic with her attempt to meld folky country with electronic indieish pop — it certainly seems like the time would be ripe, given the very different rises of Taylor Swift and Sia — but neither hooks nor lyrics are strong enough to go much beyond the cult following that everyone gets these days.
[5]

Brad Shoup: It’s a soft struggle, befitting a narrator who cannot be heard. The drummer is restrained, keeping the toms far from a volume some other producer would deem rightful. Still, there’s a brightness to the arrangement that implies this is just a waystation. Cam adds voices to hers by the end; perhaps there’s escape.
[6]

Alfred Soto: She’s explicit: her heart’s torn in two because the sex isn’t working. As she sings the title hook, a bass drum pounds, an unveiled threat. Cam’s voice, often too genteel for my sake, is up to the sudden key and and psychological changes of her lyrics.
[6]

Anthony Easton: Best country single so far this year, resting on those sighs of exhaustion and resignation. The drums sound ominous but complex, with a layering of what might be flute. The metaphor might seem clumsy, but she manages to make it sound deeply convincing, like she wants to drown. Between this and “Burning House,” I wait for the next metaphor.
[10]

Megan Harrington: Like ABC’s once hallowed TGIF line-up or Hallmark at Christmastime, “Mayday” primarily serves to convince me a world that doesn’t exist — this world where you’re always free to express your sincerest emotions and those heartfelt gestures and pleas are met with reciprocity or, at least, kindness — does exist. Sure, Cam is on the brink of a break up, but listen to the way the gorgeous arrangement curls up around her. Listen to those wordless backing vocals, a whole village rallying behind her welling tears. I’ve never felt this comforted, but I want to, and until I am I have Cam’s promise that it’s real. 
[8]

Groovy!

[Video][Website]
[2.60]

Megan Harrington: It’s Dan Auerbach-produced American-by-way-of-England-fifty-years-past rock, do you need me to tell you it’s boring? Oh, it’s boring. Of all the ways to play with history, to manipulate the lexicon of garage rock, to call a séance of all the souls that wrote this song before you — Auerbach and his Elephants chose none. Nothing. There’s no twist, it’s not even as exciting as eating your influence and then vomiting it back up. “Mess Around” is the same old shit you take every morning. 
[2]

Thomas Inskeep: From the YouTube comments: “Pop? This is blues/indie rock right here, brev.” “No. Its indie pop, jizzed on by Dan Auerbach.” And if you’re curious why “Mess Around” is currently #1 on alternative radio, there’s your answer.
[1]

Jonathan Bogart: 2016 imitating 2002 imitating 1991 imitating 1980 imitating 1966. I got off this train at the last stop.
[4]

Patrick St. Michel: Not sure getting that guy from The Black Keys to do his retro polishing over your music is the best way for a band that already sounded like “lock for second biggest stage at Lollapalooza” to stand out. 
[2]

Cédric Le Merrer: All I know of Cage The Elephant is that I saw them introduced on French TV as “the new Nirvana” a few years back and immediately rolled my eyes and changed to another channel. This starts out nicely with a Spoon-ish minimalism, but everything else is regrettable, from the ironic surf singing that’s much too nasal to the unimaginative melody. Let’s just hope for them this song finds its home where it belongs, in an equally staid ad for a family product showing kids being loveably messy.
[2]

Micha Cavaseno: For all of you who could possibly want the “Tiger Feet” era of rock & roll to come back, Cage the Elephant are here.
[2]

Alfred Soto: Imitate the Vines.
[4]

Cassy Gress: There are good bits in this song; they just don’t congeal into anything great. I think surf rock is (or can be) a good look on Cage the Elephant, and I like borrowed chord progressions like the A-flat to F in the verses. But the chorus is repeated too many times (which feels like padding), and he’s got a sleepy slur that needs a little bit of edge to it.
[5]

Brad Shoup: I think they wrote the song, such as it is, around those sighs. They triple down on some heat imagery, they nick a Ray Charles title that — to me, in 2016 — signifies the Blues Brothers, they repurpose one-fourth of a solo spotted in a dusty corner. Alt-rock deserves better.
[1]

Jonathan Bradley: Dan Auerbach scuffs up some surf guitar and Cage the Elephant sings what appears to be a theme song for the world’s most buttoned-down James Bond. In his latest feature film adventure, Double-Yawn-7 meets a femme fatale at a three-star off-ramp hotel bar; he orders her a glass of warm milk (shaken, not stirred). The thrilling encounter concluded, they retire to their separate rooms; why mess around when this Best Western boasts HBO as part of its cable line-up?
[3]

It’s time for your weekly list of what else we’ve been up to.

• Leonel Manzanares de la Rosa wrote about Kanye West’s album and a retrospective on Ulver (both in Spanish)
• Alfred Soto wrote about Kanye, too, and also about five great Bonnie Raitt moments for Red Bull Music Academy.
• Megan Harrington wrote about The 1975?s new album on her tumblr.
• Jonathan Bogart wrote about an 89-year-old comic strip.
• Danilo Bortoli reviewed Sarah Neufeld’s The Ridge for Popmatters.
• Patrick St. Michel wrote about the band Suchmos and Japan’s current city pop revival for The Japan Times.
• Finally, our good friends at One Week One Band have launched a new blog A Sea of Songs and several Jukebox writers have contributed posts so far, including Juana Giaimo on Dirty Projectors, Will Adams on Catcall, Iain Mew on KING. and Katherine St Asaph on Kristin Hersh.

A classic Jukebox divide…

[Video][Website]
[6.25]

Cassy Gress: Is this the theme song/end-credits for a K-drama or something? It really sounds like it should be; it’s the piano and strings and dampened guitar line. Because it sounds so generically “heart pangs,” it’s not memorable.
[5]

Madeleine Lee: I described GFriend’s debut single,“Glass Bead,” as “winsome and wistful but not naive.” (The chorus goes: “I may seem like a glass bead, but I won’t break so easily.”) The same applies to “Rough” — and not because it’s a palette swap of “Glass Bead,” with the same soaring strings and gentle, S.E.S-inspired melodies under a new guitar-solo exterior, but because of its lyrics. Yes, the chorus hinges on the idea that “if I could run through time and become an adult, I’d hold your hand,” but this is described as being “like a wish from when I was young,” alongside an awareness of “this cruel world.” Heck, the entire thing is about trying to make up for the things you regret, which is definitely something I could already empathize with when I was in high school. It’s heartbreaking stuff, all the more so for its promise of hope at the end.
[8]

Thomas Inskeep: Squeaky-clean teen dreams sing of unspoken love. The verses don’t do much, but the chorus soars aided by some hot guitar licks (really!) and symphonic accompaniment. 
[6]

Mo Kim: The beauty of GFriend’s name is that it can be read two ways: an allusion to romantic interest (no doubt for the benefit of their male fans), or a naming of female friendship. The group has played to both, their songs speaking in the charged language of trust and confession; yet their videos eliding the male love interest entirely, centering themselves instead on the small dramas of high school and summer adolescence. There’s an easy way to read “Rough” (“Running Through Time” in its native Korean) as a declaration of romantic love if one takes the “you” in the lyrics as the boyfriend lurking outside the camera’s lens. Even so, the song is too layered to let you get away with such a singular interpretation. There’s the anxiety of growing up and realizing the world you built as a child is slowly splintering apart: ambiguity runs through the text, the two subjects constructed as “parallel lines” that never meet no matter how far they move, continuing to “miss each other.” The song anticipates a future when these things can be more easily resolved: the possibility of “running through time,” of “becoming an adult,” just to promise that “in this rough world, I’ll hold your hand.” The song’s tension lies not in the excavation of a confession but in the promise of a commitment: “Please know that my words are sincere, even if I stumble over them.” These are not just the problems of romance but the problems of post-modern relationships tinged always with false readings, of neoliberal capitalism and the damage it has done to our emotional lives, of a world in which we have grown up knowing nothing but anxiety for our futures. Whether I imagine “Rough” as a promise to a lover, a friend, or a self, it speaks in the voice of somebody navigating that painful transition from adolescence to adulthood. Maybe the best we can do is to hold onto the love songs that speak to us and let time do the rest.
[9]

Patrick St. Michel: Trends are trends, but it’s still funny watching a rise in K-pop groups like GFriend and Lovelyz who look like the sort of groups that dominated J-pop for the last five years while Japan embraces units taking moves from outfits towering over the scene in Korea. This isn’t a new development for K-pop — school uniforms have been the norm for over a century, so of course they are going to intertwine with youth culture — and, despite no shortage of thin articles about K-pop’s more “mature” image, groups such as After School and Wonder Girls were sporting high school wear before “Hallyu” could anchor a book proposal. Yet seeing, say, EXO don them feels much different than GFriend’s “Rough.” The latter is, musically, a smooth bit of pop with disco in the corners, nothing spectacular but also catchy enough come the chorus. Lyrically, it exists in the same gloopy fantasy world of idol music at its worst, a bunch of flowery language ultimately feeling empty. “Rough” exists in a weird space where it’s both far removed from any soft power pushes but also comes off like it has no interest in what actual teens might like. “Rough” sounds fluffy and feels out of place, sonically and thematically.
[5]

Alfred Soto: As much as pop embraces camp, “Rough” strikes me as the wrong kind: of soaps, of inspirational music. This collision of strings and meathanded guitar would’ve served any identikit movie theme.
[4]

Brad Shoup: The mix is congested: a mildly funky backbeat holding forth against TV strings and pop-house piano. But the sentiment is similarly stuffy. That is to say, it’s a roiling cloud in the singers’ skulls, regret and retroactive boldness smashing it up. It’s the headiest kind of crush.
[7]

Jonathan Bogart: Disco strings and power ballad guitar do most of the work propping up a thin production, but the catchy urgency of the melody does its share. I can see why it would be huge, given half a sympathetic ear, but I can also see why its appeal would be strictly limited to a particular time and place.
[6]

Disappointment.

[Video][Website]
[4.67]

Madeleine Lee: The thing has a soft, understated beauty, but “who am I” is the right question for Katy B and Craig David to be singing — honestly, in this song I have no idea.
[6]

Jonathan Bogart: The least ostentatious Lazer production I can remember ever hearing is a perfect match for one of Katy B’s most effective performances from her new album EP project. She’s so attention-getting that Craig David is almost an afterthought, but he’s been there before, and knows how to play his part. 
[8]

Alfred Soto: When Katy B wants a pop hit she hires Guy Chambers to write “Crying For No Reason.” When she wants a followup she gets Craig David to wail banalities in the kind of duet that the American market adores. It could be Ellie Goulding or Adele.
[4]

Cassy Gress: I really, really don’t like the production and/or mix on this – I almost feel like this is a straightforward R&B lost song from the Toni Braxton/Babyface album that Major Lazer dug up and farted on.  It’s too compressed, it’s too everything in my ears at the same time, and I’m not even someone who normally would complain about that.  Katy is terrific as per usual, Craig is definitely not sounding the same as he did 15 years ago and Katy is kind of blowing him out but his voice is serviceable nonetheless, and if this was just Katy, Craig, and all the backing vocals, with a different producer, I’d score it a lot higher.  This doesn’t even sound like Major Lazer.  
[4]

Micha Cavaseno: A song called “Who Am I” where Diplo destroys the identities of the collaborators seems appropriate. Allow me an explanation. Craig and Katy are eternally tied to the UK Garage continuum that spawned them: Craig to the speed garage/2-step era, and the former Baby Katy (her better career incarnation tbh) to Funky’s distillment into the ‘bass music’ aesthetic of Rinse.FM’s Geeneus. It made Katy and Craig’s debuts fresh and inspired them to be the most fascinating singer/songwriters of their fields. However, whenever you remove them from that element, an integral aspect of their character is lost, and you get some really dreary muck such as “Who Am I,” which is so overwrought that I could sink a floating ship. I worry that when I jokingly alluded to when reviewing Jessie Ware’s betrayal of dance songwriting over a year ago making Gee look like a fool, now it seems he’s willing to sacrifice all the aesthetic value of Rinse to make their flagship artist the star she deserves to be rather than what she is.
[3]

Katherine St Asaph: She ain’t MØ, that’s for sure. It pains me, but Katy B might ultimately be that most frustrating sort of artist: one who, with each album, grows more and more out of herself.
[3]

Crystal Leww: The chemistry here is a little bit off, and I’m not sure if it’s Katy B and Craig David trying too hard to be goopy or if it’s Diplo’s production vs. everyone. Katy B and Craig David should be a natural fit — both are great singers that function in mainstream vocal stylings but have massive underground credibility due to their savvy pick of production collaborators. Along that vein, Major Lazer should also work, too, but the ballad style feels clumsy here. “Crying for No Reason” suffered as a single from a lack of album context, and I suspect the same will happen here when Honey is released, but “Who Am I” just feels like everyone is singing without regard to the production, without regard for each other.
[5]

Thomas Inskeep: Katy B works a midtempo lover’s plead, with Major Lazer on relatively understated production duty and Craig David on Chris Brown duty. It’s nice, but not particularly outstanding.
[5]

Brad Shoup: For better or worse, she meets her collaborators halfway. In Major Lazer’s case, it’s a soft-drink commercial, flooded with hissing cymbal crashes and studded with synth doorbells. Ostensibly, this is a duet, but even with a hand tied behind her back she’s swept David out the door.
[4]

TSJ favorites return with a fond look backwards.

[Video][Website]
[7.33]Abby Waysdorf: It’s the wistful, melancholy Pet Shop Boys that are showcased on this first single off the upcoming Super, following the well-received dance bombast of Electric. Not that there aren’t plenty of beats in “The Pop Kids,” of course, but it focuses more on the narrative abilities that have always been one of my (many) favorite things about the Pet Shop Boys. I’m likely not the only one haunting this website to have a particular memory that this song brings up For me, it’s a study-abroad in London in my late teens, going to nightclubs for the first time (I like it here, I love it, I am never going home). There’s a specificity and vividness to the characters and situation, with just that bit of wistfulness that has always been a hallmark of their narrative songs. There are always more stories to tell.
[9]

Iain Mew: Aside from the additional ’90s nostalgia beats lending a Saint Etienne edge, musically it’s pretty much in line with Electric median, which is no bad thing. With bits about the joy of clubbing too, it needs something to avoid being a “Vocal” retread, though, and gets it in the way that Neil Tennant weaves together memories of a music scene and of an individual relationship. The “us” in “they called us the pop kids” works ambiguity — it could be tight or loose, the same couple “we” as the rest of the song or a break to bring in a whole group of people — before “I loved you” snaps into focus. There’s a keen sense of how fitting in with a community and discovering how you and one specific person within it fit together can go hand in hand.
[8]

Katherine St Asaph: A companion piece to Saint Etienne’s “Popular,” with more finality; to a certain shade of pop listener (i.e. me, and you’re here so maybe you) it’s like listening to your own eulogy. As you’d expect there are quotes — clearly they also loved “Road Rage” — house piano that goes harder and more emotively than the facsimiles they’d hear out now, and a love story with something unspoken that puts it in the past. Objectively it’s a bit slight, but only so it’s filled with your memories.
[9]

Alfred Soto: Saint Etienne covered this ground four years ago: an elegy honoring the kind of curating in which only future pop critics — pop kids —  would specialize. But Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe are also pop musicians, which means they nostalgia might be garrulous but the sequencer is well programmed. They went out on Wednesday nights. They quoted the best bits. House piano was a constant. Growing in self-knowledge means appreciating sex: the “Oh! I like it here” is the most erotic Tennant moment in years. They were never being boring — they had too much time to find for their research.
[7]

Micha Cavaseno: Unabashed tribute or lavish eulogy to times in the past? Your best guess is as good as mine.
[6]

Cassy Gress: It may just be because I listened to it recently, but this sounds like a sequel to “Being Boring”, except with copious sound effects from “the nineteen, nine-ties.”  And it’s sort of astounding to me that Neil Tennant still apparently sounds exactly like he did twenty-five years ago.  I am by no means a PSB expert, and I don’t know how much house influenced their output in the 90s, but it’s weird to me to hear a pretty standard Pet Shop Boys song with pretty standard house piano grafted onto it.  I sort of like this, but it’s one of those things where two great tastes don’t necessarily taste all that good together.
[6]

Thomas Inskeep: If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, so after the triumph of Electric, Neil and Chris stuck with Stuart Price to helm their forthcoming Super; based on its first single, that sounds like it was a wise move. This is an ebullient record with a dash of “Being Boring”-esque looking back (in this case to the early ’90s), also reminiscent of Electronic’s “Disappointed“; (which is not only from the time period referenced, but had lead vocals from Mr. Tennant as well). PSB know that sometimes, the best way to do uplifting pop is to tinge it with sadness, and that comes through here. 30 years on they’re still killing it.
[8]

Daisy Le Merrer: You know how movies about how great movies are end up with great reviews and many awards? Think of The Artist a few years ago or Hail, Caesar in a few weeks. You may not remember the details those days, but as a pop music critic of course you’re going to overrate this song because like the best Tumblr meme it just is so relatable. And you’re a damn contrarian if you don’t.
[8]

Will Adams: There’s a split-second realization that happens when you discover that someone you’re speaking to shares the same depth of passion for music as you do. It’s a moment so beautiful it breaks my heart, and for years I’ve searched for it. I’ve yearned to have friends who don’t look at me sideways when I say I love Carly Rae Jepsen, who do more than nod their head when I rattle off my favorite pop songwriters, who can gush about the tiniest production detail in any song (here, it’s the panning piano chords in the verses). I’ve been so fortunate to be a part of the Jukebox community on here, Twitter and in brief in-person encounters to experience those moments in flashes. But it’s a feeling I’ve almost never felt in an intimate setting. “The Pop Kids” is a daydream for me, a story of a relationship that flourishes because of music. The details of the dream are all there, from unabashed musical immersion (“we quoted the best bits”) to plush contentment (“ooh, I like it here”) to the devastating emotional core (“I loved you”). That it’s so far remained a dream is probably the source of the childish envy that keeps my guard up with “The Pop Kids.” It’s too perfect, too unattainable, for me to fully love it. Or maybe it’s because there’s too much Sprechgesang.
[7]

Brad Shoup: It’s very possible I’m not reading this right, but by staging this in the early ’90s, PSB are crafting a bio counter to current acid narrative of the era. (I can’t imagine one would quote the best bits of “Ebeneezer Goode,” but then again…) The romance and loss are palpable, to be expected from a song that begins with “remember” and ends with “I loved you”. Part cutesy poptimist memoir, part erotic file access, it summons a sense of ending to which I cannot surrender. (There’s also a fair amount of “Policy of Truth” suffusing things.) But when Neil groans “oh/I like it here,” I can understand nostalgia.
[6]

Scott Mildenhall: Some were there, and some are missing the 1990s. It’s quite weird to hear the Pet Shop Boys so embodying other people’s youth from a time when they were already the Pet Shop Boys, but this is them all over: dancing to disco because they don’t like rock, well aware that life is much more simple when you’re young. “The Pop Kids” paints a picture of blinkered hedonism, with the melancholy only visible in hindsight. Whether the love was platonic or otherwise, it feels like it was never expressed so clearly at the time, and it still remains a little too subtle. Nonetheless, the song goes straight in the pantheon, of spoken Neil Tenant verses (wonderfully alliterative), and Neil Tennant expounding on moving to London to be among the beautiful people. It could easily be self-referential, even reverential, but instead it’s just one of the greatest bands of all time continuing on their happy-sad way.
[7]

Crystal Leww: “The Pop Kids” sounds like it could slot in anywhere in the Pet Shop Boys discography, but at a time when dance doesn’t quite know how it wants to move forward, songs like “The Pop Kids” manage to sound timeless. It’s propelled forward by a basic four on the floor and a British-tinged vocal and, as a result, grooves in a steady way. I heard Underworld on a Beats 1 show the other day; there’s no reason why “The Pop Kids” wouldn’t fit there or in the middle of a house set at Ultra next month.
[7]

We’ll stay right here with you, Bran.

[Video][Website]
[7.29]

Edward Okulicz: Having enjoyed her first album but not felt the need to go back to its pleasant patness, or its pat pleasantness, this feels like a huge step forward — Clark’s condemnation has intent to pull the trigger this time. “If you want the girl next door, go next door” — so simple, anyone could have written it, but so powerfully deployed. I adore how the chorus could end with that brilliant line but then it rams it into a brilliant second half. I took a point off for two lyrical weak spots; Marcia Brady, and “perfect dress/perfect mess.” Other than that, this feels as much a blast-off as a kiss-off, or like one of Carrie Underwood’s third-person stories was taken into the first person and delivered with cynicism and danceability at the same time. It really shakes, and I’m really excited about what’s to come from her new record now.
[8]

Anthony Easton: Sounds a lot like 80s era Roseanne Cash, which was new wave perfection flirting with Nashville. It could be a pop crossover, just as her last one was an attempt at traditionalism. It also sounds new, not attempting nostalgia, with an excellent hook and a better voice. 
[7]

Alfred Soto: The aural equivalent of dead moths across a sliding door track, 12 Stories didn’t move me much: a smart, precise dead end. The “Edge of Seventeen” rhythm of “Girl Next Door,” hopped up to match Brandy Clark’s lascivious evening with a girl in a pretty apron, is a surprise and a triumph, a reminder that from “Baby I’m Burnin’” to “That Don’t Impress Me Much,” eros in country music requires discolicious beats. The strings lend an air of menace; “Girl Next Door” imagines sexual attraction as a danger that may not end happily. In case the popped bass and thwacking programmed drums frighten NPR fans, an acoustic guitar plays the hook over the fade. Deducted a notch for the Marcia Brady verse, Clark’s lame idea of topical humor. 
[8]

Iain Mew: A kiss-off that sounds like its own getaway vehicle — so this is what widescreen means.
[8]

Brad Shoup: The good-girl putdowns are whatever, but Clark’s constructed this remarkable ecosystem for the narrator. It’d be easy to say find someone who isn’t a dipshit, but the track — streaked in synths, studded with kickdrum — replies with tension and lust and anger. She’s figured out what he’s ultimately looking for, but she’d love to just look beyond tonight.
[6]

Will Adams: The chug of the chorus (never underestimate how far sixteenth-note tom toms à la “Running Up That Hill” can go) is the most engaging part of this; it allows Brandy Clark to fully ignite. The rest is a value pack of imagery — Debbie Downer Debutante, Marcia Brady, bacon frying — that’s hit or miss.
[6]

Thomas Inskeep: Finally. I wanted, tried to love Clark’s debut as an artist, 12 Songs, because its songwriting was so solid, but its coffeehouse production felt so resigned, like it wasn’t even trying, far too samey over the course of an entire album. “Girl Next Door” is another matter entirely, thanks I suspect largely to Jay Joyce, the man who’s helped make stars out of Little Big Town and Eric Church, and here gives Clark’s sass the behind-the-boards punch it deserves. This chugs, this moves, this is a fuckin’ windows-down sing-a-long, and in the current country radio climate, I can see Clark making her first mark on the airwaves alongside like-minded women like Cam and Maddie & Tae. (And as opposed to her buddy Kacey Musgraves’ trapped-in-amber kitsch, “Girl Next Door” sounds altogether current.) Say hello to Brandy Clark 2.0, not just a hit songwriter but, potentially, a hit artist in her own right. Hot damn.
[8]

As long as you don’t give up on us, Liss…

[Video][Website]
[6.00]

Brad Shoup: If this were a Death Cab for Cutie song I’d probably overrate it.
[5]

Will Adams: Lissie’s solo material has never quite hit with me like her dance collaborations with Morgan Page, which seems strange considering Page’s work isn’t too far removed from her guitar-based folk-rock. “Don’t You Give Up On Me” strikes the midpoint between the two. It shares the propulsion of a dance song, with a steady 4/4 kick and a soaring chorus melody. As ever, though, Lissie’s unique voice stays at the center to intensify the color of an otherwise sepia-toned surrounding.
[7]

Alfred Soto: With the bass drum hinting at disco country, a solo hinting at late ’80s Rosanne Cash, and a star tripping lyric about eternity and some such nonsense, “Don’t You Give Up on Me” sounds a remix away from topping the dance chart. A mushy vocal though.
[6]

Scott Mildenhall: This is proper Radio 2, sandwich-filling for PopMaster stuff, filable right alongside The Pierces and the Chrissie Hynde single with the dog in the video. There’s only about half of the foreboding fog Lissie brought to her “Go Your Own Way” cover, but it’s making hay on the same hills. As if by a haunted Carpenters, it’s a taste of bitter honey, but perhaps not one potent enough to commit to memory.
[6]

Patrick St. Michel: I’ve sat listening to this for…yikes, how did 30 minutes slip by so fast?…but I can’t think of anything to write about this beyond “pleasant enough.” Which says more about me, of course! But yeah, pleasant enough.
[5]

Jibril Yassin: The urge to write this off as paint-by-numbers is strong; the chord progression snakes through in a manner that’s not too comfortable but it’s not exceptional. Yet the chorus hits, as strange as it is to hear the wash of guitars slide off into the air mesh with that dance groove, it works. It’s MOR with a bit of melodramatic heft — still a shame the song feels so content to stay in cruise control.
[7]

Edward Okulicz: I don’t want to give up on Lissie because her chorus is so likeable, but apart from that chorus, it sounds like she’s given up on the song. I love the 70s soft-rock guitars and the polite crunch of the beats, but it’s only for a few lines that Lissie cuts through to making me care.
[5]

Cassy Gress: Years ago I used to knock myself out at night by putting on my headphones and listening to particularly drifty songs that I knew.  This song isn’t drifty, but the line “are ya swimmin’ in the stars / breathin’ in eternity” is basically all of that summed up in nine words and something in my brain leaped up when I heard it.  This is a dark forest campfire song, and I don’t mean that in a singalong way, I mean that it sounds the way the flames look as they lick the indigo horizon and dissipate into smoke.
[7]

Not a Bananarama cover, but about as many naked men in the video as if it were.

[Video][Website]
[5.22]

Alfred Soto: They haven’t topped 2011’s “Whirring,” even if 2013’s “Cholla” and “Bats” came close. Here they waste time with banter caught on studio mics and let the power of the riff get diffused.
[5]

Iain Mew: Their first album mixed sweet melody and bursts of riffage; the second built on its successes for some awesome rock bombast. Now they’ve stripped away the extremes at either end of their sound, and rather than barer rock adding focus, they just sound a bit lacking in identity.
[4]

Cassy Gress: What I’m hearing in the first 20 seconds of this song is the “Welcome Freshmen” theme song. No clue why! There are much more obvious connections to make!  I like that fast-strummed A that goes through some of the choruses, and the riff is all right, but I’m not a fan of the voice doubled an octave higher – it works in the verses, but it sounds a little shrill and squeaky in the chorus – and I don’t like at all the rhyme of tryin’/mind.  It might have been better if she’d sort of slurred “tryin’” into one syllable (though that’d be out of place too), or even changed the lyrics to “even when I think I tried”, but as it is, it doesn’t sound like it rhymes, and it sticks out.  As rock songs go though, it’s got a pretty low bar to clear right now.
[6]

Micha Cavaseno: You “wouldn’t say that this is the end”, but it definitely feels like the end of the rope. Scandal songs thrice recycled, a dispassionate come hither vocal, and equally shrugged off guitar riffs. The last thing on someone’s mind would be putting this record on.
[2]

Leonel Manzanares de la Rosa: As with most of The Joy Formidable’s songs, the strength of this track lies in the relentless, almost Keith Moon-ish drum beat (this must sound gargantuan live), but the guitar/bass work –especially the muted strumming in the verses– combines with Ritzy Bryan’s gritty vocals splendidly. It’s a little bit stuck between the abrasiveness of noise-rock and the accessibility of pop (being both and neither at the same time), and while that’s not necessarily a bad thing, the main riff promised us a much heavier song; we needed the pop thing to be taken down a notch. 
[6]

Cédric Le Merrer: There’s a “your mom in leather pants” embarassing quality to a band trying to be badass with the kind of sound that would have felt slightly retro on the Daria soundtrack. But your mom should not worry about your embarassment if she’s having fun doing it.
[7]

Thomas Inskeep: If Blondie rocked harder they might’ve sounded like this, and I mean that as a compliment.
[7]

Brad Shoup: It’s like a seastorm: lots going on underneath, with tumult up top. And the riff is fantastic, a buzzy singsong that gets passed from guitar to singer with ease.
[7]

Patrick St. Michel: I think it’s great The Joy Formidable are using their position to try to shake things up via the video for this song, along with uh the articles they get to write for The Guardian. Too bad the last thing on their mind is the actual music, the end result here being a stuck-in-the-same-gear chug with no pay off. Maybe just get a Medium account?
[3]