Wednesday, September 9th, 2015

Josef Salvat – Open Season

This guy last washed his hair on the same day he last cleaned his dorm room, which was the day this sweater was originally manufactured, AND YET. HOW.


[Video][Website]
[4.70]

Alfred Soto: If you like Double’s “Captain of Her Heart,” this Australian artist sounds like their singer, and the midtempo electro disco sounds just as overstuffed. It’s as if everyone knew this would’ve been an acoustic singer-songwriter plaint ten years ago.
[5]

Jonathan Bogart: If I’d been told ten years ago that moody, inspirational electro would be the dominant international sound of tasteful pop in 2015, I think I might have been excited by the prospect. Now I just feel fatigue.
[6]

Micha Cavaseno: As I told y’all kids, the Nick Jonas “Jealous” format was not R&B but the future of soft-rock, and behold, check these lame metaphors by a guy who was probably doing this same song in Mumford & Sons style acoustic strum a year and a half ago.
[3]

Daniel Montesinos-Donaghy: From a lyrical standpoint, Salvat appears not as smart as he thinks he is — the clunker about a “very arbitrary road” is a meal-mouthed swing at world-building, the type of empty description that leads nowhere. Vocally, he has a crisp, deadpan tone that goes towards selling the undercooked parts of his material. “Open Season” comes from last year’s In Your Prime EP, where he flourishes on the widescreen melodrama of “Shoot and Run”. The mood of “Open Season” is one he would do well to revisit, however: Balearic Junior Destroyer isn’t a bad look now that Dan Bejar is off performing Leonard Cohen cosplay.
[6]

Anthony Easton: I turned off when he started singing “arbitrary,” and didn’t really tune back in. The production is grating and overstuffed, but it would be more interesting if it worked at either cossetting the voice or abrasively working against it. As per my usual taste, I like when it opens up near the end and sounds a bit like space disco. 
[6]

Katherine St Asaph: Landfill synthpop leads to nothing but sludge and plastic, and I note how Salvat’s stance on Top 40 has shifted markedly now that he has a shot of joining it. But judging on his earlier material and particular skillset, there’s solution. Namely: lose the Coldplay, use the sultry.
[4]

Thomas Inskeep: He listens to a lot of Coldplay and Ed Sheeran, doesn’t he?
[2]

Ramzi Awn: Plodding, powerless palatial electro. And the chorus might as well be a Chevrolet commercial post-“Like A Rock.”  
[2]

Brad Shoup: That “so” in “so I’ll be needing you” hits me as a resigned admission, maybe something glumly romantic, or perhaps just depressive. I get it. He’s working in a limited range but he makes a couple elegant bends. The synths flash by like swaths of late-summer rain.
[6]

Scott Mildenhall: Vocally he has a touch of the Aiden Grimshaws, and this could easily be one of his calmer efforts. The lyrics are confusing — and when the words “very arbitrary road” appear in them probably shouldn’t be the point — but a sense of directness comes out of them. Salvat doesn’t err; the person he’s talking to knows exactly what he means, and the hazy history they share is a hook with which to be pulled along by the track’s propulsion.
[7]

Reader average: [7.75] (4 votes)

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