Fun fact: Healy actually named this song after a sitcom he dreamed his dad was in…

[Video][Website]
[4.00]

Aaron Bergstrom: I like my frontmen like I like my coffee: meticulously packaged and sold to me via so many niche cultural signifiers that I have completely lost the ability to distinguish between marks of legitimate quality and pretentious nonsense. The fact that I love it anyway makes me feel weirdly complicit in something.
[8]

Thomas Inskeep: If the Killers were lacking Brandon Flowers’s charisma, and forgot to write a song, it might sound like this wet, low-sodium saltine cracker.
[2]

Harlan Talib Ockey: I don’t think I’m ever going to like this lyrical style. “Part of the Band” is a solipsistic, pretentious supercut of Very Online Buzzwords arranged like it’s supposed to reveal some deep personal truth. Musically, this is so evidently inspired by Bon Iver that you can even pinpoint the specific songs that spawned each synth and saxophone flourish. There’s also a strange “Viva La Vida” flavor to the strings, which makes for an incongruous and uncomfortable combination that doesn’t quite seem to know how sincere it wants to be.
[2]

Hannah Jocelyn: Don’t promise me “Viva La Vida” and give me “Stave it off, 1,2,3”! Pre-Norman Fucking Rockwell, I would have loved a maximalist, Antonoff-produced 1975 record, and if this was a band that didn’t write about Vaccinista tote bag chic baristas, “Paul Simon meets Bon Iver” would sell me unconditionally. There’s a lot to appreciate in what we do have (thanks Manny Marroquin!), but the self-conscious 70s rock pastiche of the chorus still grates, and Antonoff’s muted-cacaphony shtick — which only barely worked on the ten minute “All Too Well” — feels less like a trademark than a crutch. Go listen to Gang of Youths’ “Returner” instead, which does the better parts of this song backwards and in heels Australia.
[5]

Alfred Soto: “Am I ironically woke? The butt of my joke?/Or am I just some post-coke, average, skinny bloke?” — boy, Matt Healy wants an epitaph. The mishmash of homosexual confessions, clever argot, nonsense and string sections isn’t as compelling as previous chapters; the arrangement, as woozy as a reveler staggering out of a party at sunrise, needs shaping.
[6]

Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: The 1975’s albums so far: thesis (their mediocre debut album), antithesis (their very good second album), synthesis (their good but over-thought third album), self-parody (their mess of a fourth album.) If “Part of the Band” is a representative sample of LP 5, we’re entering an unprecedented era of self-parody of the self-parody, with a band that has ventured so far into its own mythos that there’s nothing left beyond haphazardly scattered imagery and self-reference. I’d be happier with it if there was a hook or anything resembling one. Instead, we’ve got Jack Antonoff on production, suffocating our boys with the same respectable adult alternative material he hands out to all of his sophisticated clients. There’s maybe one line and one drum fill I enjoy here. The rest is detritus.
[1]

Our second-favourite Swift soundtrack single, after the one about Paul Potts…

[Video][Website]
[6.50]

Kayla Beardslee: A nice, eerie entry into the Folklore section of her discography. Taylor has never been a better or more dynamic vocalist than she is right now.
[7]

Harlan Talib Ockey: Swift’s vocal performance is exceptional; she brilliantly conveys the solitude inherent in the lyrics, and her low notes are incredibly poignant. The lyrics are largely effective. It’s not technically personification, but there’s still a pervasive undertone of nature as a sentient force. However, I don’t love how often “you didn’t see me here” is repeated, especially given how barren in imagery it is compared to the rest of the song. Finally, anything that resembles the hushed, understated guitar of Hiss Golden Messenger’s Bad Debt is very much appreciated.
[8]

Wayne Weizhen Zhang: Sleepy tunes for Evermore apologists. 
[4]

Alfred Soto: Growing in confidence with each pass at folk, Taylor Swift and Aaron Dessner assemble a suitably haunted movie theme. No doubt its breathy chill reflects the precision of its makers even if Swift sounds rather genteel: she doesn’t sound haunted so much as a singer-songwriter enraptured by the Emmylou Harris vinyl she’s discovered.
[6]

Thomas Inskeep: Wow, this is impressively high (low country) gothic, akin to Emmylou Harris in the ’90s, or Dolly Parton’s early ’70s murder ballads. Chilling in the best way, pushing the sound of Folklore and Evermore further out naturally, and precisely what I want more of from Swift. Does this mean that Aaron Dessner is her Daniel Lanois? Chew on that.
[9]

Andrew Karpan: Drawing at its own measured pace, Swift’s voice here feels like a ghostly hush creaking out of the floorboards of the indie-folk aesthetic she’s been building with Aaron Dessner for some time. While it appears on a soundtrack loosie and is largely contained to communicating the accumulated resentments that populate Delia Owens’ publishing-phenomenon-turned-minor-hit-movie, Swift’s commitment to the Mumford & Sons cosplay of it all is enough to make the moment feel strangely definitive. Most prominent is the sound of a fiddle, its thin needles of sound decorating the song with a stirring, if not quite authentic energy. But if the song tried any harder, you wouldn’t be able to hear Swift at all. 
[5]

But not afraid to blurb!

[Video]
[5.86]

Thomas Inskeep: There’s a cottage industry in the UK right now of DJs making house records based around vocal samples from other records – especially from the ’90s and ’00s. But this single from a Scottish duo is something different, and special. They took a vocal by Debra Henry, from the Philly International soul group Silk (from a deep cut, “I Can’t Stop (Turning You On),” on their 1979 album Midnight Dancer), and didn’t just loop it; they speed it up, slow it down, and play with the track they made to surround the vocal. Most records of this ilk run a lyric into the ground atop a simple dance beat, but this has genuine thought and innovation in its bones, and I can’t get enough of it. (It’s also a killer earworm.) 
[10]

Ian Mathers: This is one of those cases where it’s worth checking out the source material to see what exactly they grabbed from it and what they did with that. The question isn’t whether they grabbed the best bit (often counterproductive!) but you can definitely spot check whether the rerub is worth listening to when the original is out there. “Afraid to Feel” is a pretty solid example of taking a bit that might have passed most by in the original song and making such an indelible hook (here via doing several variations on it, all pretty successful) that it does stand on its own instead of just riding coattails. Even from a home listening remove it feels like it would just be brutally effective on a dancefloor, which bumps it up.
[7]

Harlan Talib Ockey: Apparently this is a house take on a disco edit, but what is a disco edit for if not extensive build-ups and hypnotic flow states? This careens between sections so swiftly and abruptly that it seems genuinely impractical to dance to. The vigorous bass and keys do go incredibly hard; these elements are from Silk’s original, though, and ultimately I’m not sure anything LF System added stands out as particularly worthwhile. I also have to question the decision to re-record Silk’s track, rather than sampling it directly. I can’t find any indication that this was necessary due to copyright issues, only that LF System wanted to cut any possible red tape by doing so, denying Silk potential royalties for use of a sample in the process. And you can’t even dance to it.
[3]

Alfred Soto: What I’ve always wanted — what sounds like a Justice remix of the Silk evergreen.
[6]

Katherine St Asaph: One of those cases where the source material is good enough already that any “remake”/”cover”/”interpolation”/”sample replay”/hook colonization can only lose points, in this case by futzing with the tempo for no discernible reason besides Conor Larkman and/or Sean Finnigan saying they did something. Change the speed, get the lead.
[6]

Andrew Karpan: Nostalgia for misremembered vibes.
[3]

Samson Savill de Jong: This has such strong 2008-2010 YouTube vibes. I’m yet to decide if that’s a compliment or not.
[6]

And staying low…

[Video]
[3.17]

Wayne Weizhen Zhang: Failing up. 
[4]

Katherine St Asaph: Drake tries to recapture the deep-house moods of “Too Good” through More Life. Unsurprisingly for both 2022 Drake and 2022 in general, he achieves less life — but not that much less.
[7]

Thomas Inskeep: Just what we needed: an entire album of Drake singing lazily over largely dull house beats, of which “Falling Back” is a prime example. The only reason I can come up with for his continued massive appeal is the fact that he’s so often the lowest common denominator, and that shit sells.
[1]

Scott Mildenhall: The open road that the instrumental lays down offers “Falling Back”‘s performer endless scope to make it humanistically resonant. Alas, the performer is Drake. In going for smooth he gets gawky; in getting gawky he’s still forgettable.
[4]

Ian Mathers: Extremely rich of fucking Drake to accuse someone else of “feeling nothing”, especially on this particular mediocrity. Loses a couple points for feeling like half of it is just the same five seconds looped.
[2]

Nortey Dowuona: I know some people for some reason are praising the bland hellscape of poorly tuned Drake singing but this song is better than his whole album. There’s better singing by the amazing Samantha Harper, there’s better dancing from Mufasa and Hypeman (and more cool melodies), the drum programming and synths from Riton are better, and even John Reid shows up so you get that DU-DUDUNUDAHDAH synth line you hear once and hear until you die. It’s so much more than this bland, turgid sludge. The frustrating thing about “Falling Back”, tho, is that while the falling-back kick and jostled-around percussion are good, the synths are just too thin and cloudy to carry the melody. When Drake starts singing in his head voice it literally sounds like falling back into the inky blackness you see when you die. Even registering it now so I can keep this much more interesting song in my blurb has me pinned to my seat in complete apathy. And I’m only at the 2:44 minute mark! AND IT STARTED AG—-
[1]

No need to rush…

[Video]
[5.17]

Alfred Soto: “Montero” it ain’t, much less “That’s What I Want,” but I didn’t expect Nas to sound more anonymous than YoungBoy.
[5]

Nortey Dowuona: This unfortunately is the best choice either of them could’ve made. And that “demons in my head, I can’t stop them all from rottin’ me” from NBA is a bar. The bouncing kick sliding above the low and thin synth nearly dwarfs the spindly snare and tinny, too-low-in-the-mix hi-hats rattling like baby rattlesnakes. Nas X sadly shares the same curse as his forefather; he has the worst flow on the whole fucking song. Still a bop nonetheless; in 20 years some dweeb will rap on it better than both of them.
[6]

Thomas Inskeep: Being pissed off at BET doesn’t make LNX a good rapper. And nothing makes YoungBoy NBA sound less shrill. 
[2]

Harlan Talib Ockey: I understand what “Late to da Party” is for, but on a musical level, it is almost certainly going to be overshadowed by “Industry Baby”. Both songs cover the same “proving the detractors wrong” ground — they even both cite Lil Nas X’s track record of top ten singles — but “Party” lacks the latter’s explosive hook. The chorus is an odd disappointment after the lyrically blistering pre-chorus. Not only does the production fail to escalate, but the titular line about not being late to the party is too confusing to work as a mic drop. YoungBoy’s verses bolt off in a completely different direction very quickly; I’ll allow it, though, because he still keeps pace with Lil Nas X in raw, audacious energy.
[5]

Ian Mathers: It’s not that Lil Nas X doesn’t have a point, but this still feels joyously tossed off in a way that makes it more compelling than a lot of people who try a lot harder or at least come off that way. I’m still going to be humming the chorus to myself long after I’ve forgotten about them.
[8]

Al Varela: This isn’t a bad song, but the more I think about it the more it pisses me off. The chorus is catchy I guess, but unlike the best songs on Montero, it’s not memorable. The melody is stale, the groove is dull, and try as he might, Lil Nas X can’t get away with making a poop bar in any way funny. Yet what annoys me most is how this song and its video ground it in the BET controversy and turn what should be a serious issue into yet another insufferably ironic meme. I can usually overlook Nas making annoying Twitter bits as promo for his music because he’s a musician I can take seriously, regardless of if he’s being funny or if he’s being earnest. When he expressed genuine concern and disappointment that he was snubbed by BET despite being hugely famous and recognized by other awards shows, I felt he had every right to feel burnt for what are likely homophobic reasons. But when he then turns around and uses that controversy for the hook of his new single, I feel like his message gets completely lost. It sours me on the song as a result. It’s not even good enough to justify such flagrant marketing bullshit for an issue I thought he was treating seriously. If it really is mostly just so he can get attention for his new song… well at least have the decency to make it better than mid.
[5]

The winner of 2022’s most elaborate game of peekaboo speaks…

[Video][Website]
[6.33]

Ian Mathers: Kinda feels like it’d be hard to make eye contact with the dude in question after hearing this. 
[7]

Harlan Talib Ockey: Meg absolutely demolishes every man with the audacity to try her in less than three minutes. The only line in “Plan B” that doesn’t hit like a wrecking ball is “you’s a bitch”, a deeply awkward anticlimax at the end of the chorus. Everything else is cataclysmic in its point blank simplicity. The flow’s directness and the production’s stability also bring “Plan B” a certain level of freestyle energy that only compounds the charisma and contempt dripping from Megan’s vocals. Lastly, I’m tempted to add a point for mid-’90s nostalgia, but I’ll resist it this time.
[7]

Thomas Inskeep: Using the bed of the magnificent Mr. Dalvin’s Freek Mix of Jodeci’s 1995 “Freek ‘N You,” Megan comes out spitting fire and taking no motherfucking prisoners on “Plan B,” occasionally rapping in cadences reminiscent of classic ’90s hip hop. (Was this focus grouped specifically for my hip hop tastes?) At one point she interpolates Lil’ Kim’s verse on Junior M.A.F.I.A.’s “Player’s Anthem,” which makes a lot of sense; in more ways than one, Megan is the truest heir yet to Kim, able to both unleash raw, strictly-for-the-heads verses and drop poppier records (cf. “Sweetest Pie”) without missing a beat. 
[9]

Andrew Karpan: The dance collabs still seem to pay the bills for prime-era Megan Thee Stallion, but the solo outings really tell stories about the daily life of one the country’s few true top-line, classic-style rappers who also make pop records. If “Thot Shit” was about how heavy is the crown of such responsibilities, “Plan B” doubles down on the classicism by way of a Wu-Tang sample, used to somewhat aggressive effect. “Dick don’t run me, I run dick,” she raps, a line that alludes in no uncertain terms to her own attempts to run the rap game. 
[6]

Edward Okulicz: Megan Thee Stallion has the potential to come out with a song where she doesn’t just wield her sexuality and power like a sword, she actually impales everyone with it. Alas this isn’t it — almost everything she said has been said, even verbatim, by other rappers. Her presence nearly always impresses, but here it just reminds me how ahead of her time Lil’ Kim was.
[3]

Nortey Dowuona: Lowkey? Meg should’ve gotten Raekwon and Ghost on this one too. Mr. Dalvin’s work is so immortal that the beat is barely changed at all. As for the raps, Meg is pretty bitter and cool, her flow slow and her measured snapping off at the last word (face, places; work, deserve; sleep, eat; trust you, fucked you) feeling like a sharp, short slap across the cheeks each time. But it’s not as intricate or as dazzling as Rae or Ghost’s were, and it only gains most of its power due to who it’s aimed at. Still, “the only accolade you had is that I fucked you” is a very damning one-liner.
[6]

He’s only the band Daniel Bedingfield could have been…

[Video][Website]
[4.67]

Edward Okulicz: This is surprisingly fun and inoffensive. But it could be better. In fact, most Sheeran songs could be made better if you just cut their choruses in half and kept the first bit, as if just eating one of the two Twix bars — it’s a sensory-specific satiety thing. 
[7]

Andrew Karpan: Some remixes try to insist on a fictional pop intimacy — Ariana’s throwaway lines on one of Lizzo’s post-breakout hits come to mind. But not honest Ed, who enlisted no fewer than 13 rappers, singer-songwriter acts, and even a Ukrainian pop rock band in a fascinating effort to get some juice from this slinky, noxious shuffle on his last album, a longplayer most remembered for being the one with “Bad Habits” on it. This perhaps means that Lil Baby, a rapper who’s ubiquity I find strangely comforting, isn’t given very much room to cook. His bars sound unnaturally sped up to fit in the allotted section of the record; the pointlessness of spending money to make money.
[2]

Scott Mildenhall: After the standard half-rhymes and half-raps, it’s jarring when Lil Baby comes in at double the speed, but then nothing is more Sheeran than an adornment of purely industrial purpose. This is A Serious One, because it sounds a bit moody; everything else being the crumbs that stuck to that ball as he rolled it around. “Seein’ through a picture behind a screen and forget to be / Lose the conversation for the message that you’ll never read” — it could be beat poetry, or just a first draft he felt no need to change. Still, it’s less glaringly sloppy than many a Sheeran effort, even if it’s somehow more forgettable.
[4]

Nortey Dowuona: The only real difference between Ed Sheeran and Drake is that Ed is white. That is a very specific difference, but it also allows Drake a closeness to every community he co-opts then abandons that Ed — who wisely and savvily plugged in and worked with the SBTV community from his small-time busking days — just cannot have. Because it’s not like he continued working with that community once it was of no use to him, and now he’s named a song “2Step” without contacting, say, EL-B or even MJ Cole. Tagging on a clearly disinterested but competent Lil Baby verse shows where his true priorities lie. Still, the stop before Ed begins singing “all — night, 2stepping with the woman I love” hits like a sledgehammer almost immediately the first time it happens and hits even harder on the second and third. It shows that while he has no loyalty to the communities he’s a part of, he still feels some sort of loyalty to his listenership, enough to provide them with a new sonic experience on which to carry his rather plain songwriting, with a far more subtly powerful delivery in the chorus. It’s a display of nuance and taste, something Drake has proven he has neither of over the last seven years.
[7]

Katie Gill: Honestly the most interesting thing about this song is that little disclaimer at the start of the video saying that it was filmed in Kyiv (or at least, Ed Sheeran’s bits were filmed in Kyiv. Lil Baby’s bits were obviously filmed on a soundstage back in California, I have never seen a more greenscreened city, those two artists were never in the same damn room). That adds a WHOLE BUNCH OF NEW IDEAS that this absolutely mediocre Ed Sheeran song that sounds like every other damn Ed Sheeran song doesn’t deserve. Like, this song is the fifth single off the album and you can TELL.
[4]

Ian Mathers: Of course, the way you get big enough to have CGI credits at the start of your video is not by making anything distinctive (and thus potentially divisive) enough to be particularly memorable, let alone moving. The worst thing is that it’s not bad. It’s easy to imagine having it come on the radio and shrugging instead of changing the dial (unless you have some specific antipathy for Sheeran or his voice, which, fair enough). So unremarkable that its only real distinction will be at least a few years from now, when it starts sounding dated to this particular moment.
[4]

Introducing the Yeah No Yeah No Yeah No Yeahs…

[Video][Website]
[5.50]

Aaron Bergstrom: “Spitting” would have succeeded on its own merits, but stacked up next to the failed comeback efforts of Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ contemporaries (Arcade Fire, Phoenix, M.I.A., whatever this is) it comes off as positively revelatory. It’s been almost 20 years since Fever to Tell and Karen O still brings the sun. Your move, cowards.
[9]

Thomas Inskeep: A grind, a slog, a massive disappointment. Karen O can still soar when given the chance, but “Spitting” gives her nothing.
[3]

Hannah Jocelyn: I can hear Bono wailing that chorus, but Karen O’s bratty, overdriven vocals make this more urgent than anything U2’s put out this century. A typically blown-out Shawn Everett mix helps, conveying a scale appropriate for another song pleading to stop fucking with the kids or whatever. Of course, as any Twitter thread or article will tell you, fucking with the kids is exactly the point, because there’s an oppressive society to maintain. Reading the lyrics, something as simple as “Mama, what have you done?” hits. If only the mix prioritized them! Still, this has my favorite three-chords-and-the-truth progression (IV-I-V) so the lyrics could be horrible and the song would still soar.
[8]

Andrew Karpan: The pairing with Perfume Genius comes off somehow worse than the deep cut James Murphy buried on their last album, which featured the only other guest vocalist in the YYY pantheon, ’90s rap lifer Dr. Octagon. In slowing the sound of these ’00s garage rock lifers down to a sickly baroque crawl, the assorted group make their point about the imminent climate crisis. It sucks to not rock out.
[3]

Ian Mathers: Well now I want the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and/or Perfume Genius to make a shoegaze album; properly big turbine roar/lava flow guitars, harmonies, the whole thing. “But Ian you want everyone to make a shoegaze album.” You’ve got a point there, but in my defence the vertiginous swells of this song suggest that in this case I might be on to something.
[8]

Katherine St Asaph: I preferred the Yeah Yeah Yeahs to the yeeeeaaaaaahhh… yeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaahhhhh… yeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhs.
[2]

Scores seven…

[Video]
[7.00]

Andrew Karpan: A kind of bleak summertime sadness is what keeps me returning to “Moscow Mule.” The drum fills, self-consciously minimal for even Bad Bunny’s occasionally icy take on reggaeton, fill the record with melancholy spots of silence that give his voice an elegance I haven’t quite felt on his earlier hits. By the time he hits the name of the titular drink, the sound is practically a croon, evoking a 4am landscape of empty bars around the world.
[8]

Wayne Weizhen Zhang: Running out of reasons to give Bad Bunny the same score over and over. Un Verano Sin Ti has more adventurous, exciting, and heartfelt tracks than “Moscow Mule,” but the single encapsulates all the energy, melody and emotionality we’ve come to adore. 
[7]

Ian Mathers: I listen to little enough of this stuff outside the Jukebox that, combined with not understanding the words unless I look them up, I couldn’t pick any Bad Bunny song I’ve heard out of a lineup. As far as I can tell it’s always the same song (you know, the way some people are with techno or heavy metal). However, it’s pretty much all a song I enjoy hearing, and when I do some A/B testing of “Moscow Mule” against some of the other ones we’ve covered I think I like this one the best.
[7]

Thomas Inskeep: Bad Bunny’s voice is so flexible and he knows how to utilize it in a myriad of ways, singing, rapping, and issuing sounds like “ay!”: he’s endlessly listenable, and just gets more so. The joy of “Moscow Mule” isn’t in the music, which is just-fine mostly-reggaeton; it’s in hearing Bunny soar all over it. He’s the essence of compelling.
[7]

Nortey Dowuona: The loose, slow, methodical flow Bad Bunny uses on La Paciencia, MAG, Mick Coogan and Scotty Dittrich’s beatwork is expressive and pointed, making sure to directly raise and burnish certain words into your brain, where they keep circling. It’s only on the bridge — where the drums fall away and the low bass and synths combine into a supposedly ominous morass that really awkwardly lingers behind Bad Bunny — that the whole thing drags. Once the drums arrive after the first synth drop, he is able to hop and skip along the chintzy piano riff at the back of the mix. He tries to sing the bridge at the same methodical pace, but it just sinks, feeling static and limp, and ends on two bum notes that nearly kill the song. But the drums return, allowing Bunny to methodically burrow beside the snares, the energy regained.
[6]

John S. Quinn-Puerta: There’s a restraint to the way percussion is used here that allows Bad Bunny’s plaintive, back-of-the-mouth flow to fill the space. We rely on him for the rhythm, not the instrumentation, and he sets it. I find myself wanting more, another minute or two of this, which will never be delivered, much like the longing for more than sex that seems to haunt the decidedly horny lyrics. I also deeply enjoyed the synth bells, their reverb precisely as long as required.
[7]

Few made here…

[Video][Website]
[7.17]

Andrew Karpan: Throughout most of June, I found myself returning quixotically to the blaring basslines of the somehow optimistic lead single from Sharon Van Etten’s latest move away from the austere sadness that defined her early work as a respected folkie. If there is anything awkward and ill-fitting about ’80s chic, there’s something comforting about the fact that she will be the first to admit it. Only after the tenth or so listen, do I hear her liken her moves to Elaine from Seinfeld — can you imagine Mitski admitting that? In the end, there is little to apologize for, even if that’s wrapped up in the song’s whole point; which I read as the promise of grace in exchange for waking up and making a few mistakes.
[9]

Harlan Talib Ockey: Sharon Van Etten superbly deploys her signature skill of rendering a whole novel’s worth of description in just a few stark, incisive lines, and her vocal delivery in the chorus perfectly matches the buoyancy of the narrative. What weighs “Mistakes” down is the production. It feels infinitely less emotive and textured than much of her previous work, lacking both the multilayered complexity of Remind Me Tomorrow and the crackling, concert-like intensity of Are We There. In comparison, “Mistakes” plods along listlessly, chasing the spark in Van Etten’s vocals but never capturing it.
[6]

Ian Mathers: At first the way the song plods feels like a mistake. But as it goes on it accumulates momentum and brawn as Van Etten keeps pounding away at the central message, and you know what? It’s much better than that.
[7]

Thomas Inskeep: Tough, with lightly fuzzed-out guitar, committed vocals, and a rhythm track that actually moves, if Van Etten’s voice were a tad higher you’d almost mistake this for a late 2000s Yeah Yeah Yeahs track — it’s that good. Maybe indie rock isn’t dead after all.
[8]

Hannah Jocelyn: Jack Antonoff is John Congleton for people whose Sharon Van Etten is Lana Del Rey, so his production credit here makes sense, except I’m lying and he doesn’t actually have a production credit. Yet this has a strange faded quality I associate with Antonoff’s newer productions; not exactly dreamy so much as the moment immediately after the dream ends and fades from memory. The lyrics don’t help, leaning into Van Etten’s worst tendencies with their vagueness: “When I make a mistake/turns out it’s great/it’s much better than that.” Uh, good for you, Sharon! She makes it work because her smoky, anguished vocals can make anything work, and that voice sticks with me more than any synths or lyrics. But maybe a song about loving mistakes would mean something if this didn’t feel so safe.
[5]

Alfred Soto: Unafraid to use the conventions of melodrama to limn her romantic crises, Sharon Van Etten excels at loudness. When he yells about mistakes, she blames herself and shames us. I don’t recoil. Credit those synths.
[8]