It’s evening on the East Coast, and here’s an evening sort of song…
Julian Axelrod: The Marías are the kind of perfectly pleasant band that I look away from for five seconds and all of a sudden they’re showing up on Bad Bunny songs and the upper reaches of the Coachella lineup. This song is lovely and nearly impossible to engage with critically, like artisan water or a nice hand soap.
[7]
Alfred Soto: How about a nice spot of warm tea?
[5]
Claire Davidson: I’m tempted to give “No One Noticed” credit for having a “pretty” instrumental, but the combination of gentle guitars and gauzy synth pads is so basic that it hardly holds my attention beyond the first minute. What exasperates me about this song is María Zardoya’s delivery, a placid falsetto that feels totally removed from the deep loneliness her lyrics illustrate. I suspect that this is a consciously ironic choice, borne of the narrator’s knowledge that her fleeting hopes for a long-distance romance are likely in vain; note the lyric, “I’d kinda like it if you’d call me.” If anything, though, this approach only bothers me more—given how long the loneliness epidemic has been a hot-button issue, I think we can all relate to feeling neglected, so why not embrace the emotion?
[4]
Katherine St. Asaph: There are two reasons I love this. One is that Maria Zardoya’s voice sounds uncannily like Stina Nordenstam, as does the song (very “Everyone Else in the World” or “Winter Killing“). Two is that it puts me back on some bullshit, sends me through some mental channels that never fell into disrepair.
[9]
Ian Mathers: I genuinely can’t sort out yet whether I think the listlessness here works for me. It feels suspended between hypnosis and monotony. Either of those could be positive, but I’m not sure it’s landing.
[6]
Nortey Dowuona: The tiny fragments of verses that ripple outward from Jesse Perlman’s guitar line and Josh Conway and Gianluca Buccellati’s tranquil keyboards feel unfinished, timid. The chorus makes a naked, earnest dive, but when it ebbs away, it feels unsettled and languid, lulling the listener into a gentle sleep, troubled by the loneliness and despair in each word. As the refrain slowly trickles into the song, Zardoya’s voice becomes more insistent and direct. She pulls the listener back into the world, out of their troubled dreams and into the dawn, before gently whispering the chorus then disappearing entirely.
[10]
Tim de Reuse: We call it “dream-pop,” but it’s usually just pop with reverb, huh? What if we really leaned into it? “No One Noticed” sounds barely conscious: the instrumental is a mud of guitar-music leftovers somewhere at the bottom of the mix, and the vocalist sounds like she might just get tired of singing between words and step away. It’s a full, enthusiastic embrace of the kind of dull evening loneliness that leaves your skull feeling like it’s been stuffed with cotton. As a result of that unwavering commitment, it’s kind of dull itself. Good to have goals and follow through on them, I guess.
[6]
Mark Sinker: Uncanny Badalamenti valley, where uncanny means… kinda dull.
[4]
Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: Soft rock is one of those unkillable musical modalities. No matter what era or scene there will always be a need for it — lightly strummed guitars, pleasant melodies, an absence of any sonic features that would cause you to feel any particular way about it. I am, I suppose, glad that songs like “No One Noticed” exist, especially performed as competently as here. I just don’t know why I need to hear them.
[4]