The Singles Jukebox

What’s that, you ask? More cred?

[Video][Website]
[5.50]

Jonathan Bradley: More than those who would deliberately seek to distil the spirit of These Times, with “Only God Knows” and its feasting Baphomet, Young Fathers tap into the eschatological panic of our contemporary moment. With the fervor of Arcade Fire and the gospel of TV On The Radio, they propel their rickety and rocketing vehicle into pop void. Innately catchy yet blinkered as it grasps for a singularity, “Only God Knows” disintegrates in its attempt, ponderous and weighty even as it is celebratory. This is from the sequel film to 1996’s Trainspotting; if that had “Born Slippy .NUXX” as its iconic soundtrack moment, imagine the insistent intensity of the Underworld song, but with the ecstasy replaced with death and the hedonism subsumed by dread.
[8]

Alfred Soto: A mishmash that doesn’t quite work: the rap is passionate but without intensity and the basement tapes percussion doesn’t do the choir’s uplift any favors. 
[3]

Micha Cavaseno: I don’t know when Young Fathers decided making all their beats move from excessive clamor to rock stomp-alongs for festivals and Radio 1 Playlists, but it’s really hurt them. The production is still that strange sensation of listening to an old radio try to transmit to you from down in a well as its corroded speakers flange in and out of proper projection, but that choir drains away the fraught glory they used to embody.
[2]

Hannah Jocelyn: This is basically a summary of Young Fathers’ sound — rambling call-and-response struggles with faith, distorted synths, overwhelming gospel choirs, lo-fi production. It would be a mess if anyone else did it, but there’s no point in calling anything Young Fathers does a mess when that’s exactly what they go for. Those who listen to this band do so for the moments where everything clicks, and it’s exciting to hear that happening more consistently in this song, which goes to heights only teased by their previous collaboration with the Leith Congregational Choir, “Shame.” With Young Fathers’ past two albums they became cult favorites; seeing as this is for the Trainspotting 2 soundtrack, their cult should expand significantly, and there aren’t a lot of more deserving bands.
[8]

David Sheffieck: The big climax falls a bit short for me – it might strive for catharsis, yet it turns messy somewhere in the mixing – but up through the bridge this is a heart-racing, tension-building piece. Raw and ominous and driving, with a winning musical theater quality in the chorus’s call and response and the way it’s balanced by the powerful, pounding production: this may not be “Born Slippy”, but it achieves much of the same irresistible effect while aiming at an entirely different goal.
[8]

Will Adams: Unlike “City of Stars,” perhaps this might benefit from in-movie context, but any sense of spiritual euphoria that might occur is always undercut by the canned production.
[4]