The Singles Jukebox

Our limit isn’t very high, then…

[Video][Website]
[5.33]

Anthony Easton: Arthur Russell comes back first as queerness without camp, and second time as meloncholy without queerness. I would sooner listen to the subdued beauty of “Get Around to It”, rather than third generation knock-offs.
[5]

Chuck Eddy: Present-day indielectronica acts clearly have no clue what made Arthur Russell’s music good in the first place, and they’re clearly incapable of distinguishing his great stuff (of which there was a couple handfuls, almost all released before the mid ’80s and falling under the general rubric “dance music”) from his tedium (of which there now seems to be a truckload, ranging from Muzak to quasi-country and mostly released or at least widely disseminated long after his 1992 death, which just maybe suggests he didn’t want it out there). In fact, people like Blake perversely seem to prefer the latter– which tracks like this mimic so faint-heartedly they barely exist. That said, there is nonetheless something calming about this record, and I’m surprised to find that that’s owed more to his voice than to the music. Honestly: I hate this way less than I expected to.
[4]

Mallory O’Donnell: Illustrative of my crucial problem with the Arthur Russell comparisons, this is way more Junior Boys or bummed-out Jamie Lidell than World of Echo. Only really redeems itself with the gradual progression into hiss and the sounds of machines having consensual intercourse. Given an extra point because it might well be a Wilhelm Reich reference, so he and Kate Bush will at least have that to talk about.
[5]

David Moore: An 8-bit Maxwell song fronted by a two-bit Jamie Lidell. It’s simultaneously garish and just kind of there, like the fireplace channel or an oversize lava lamp, both of which I’ve been known to stare at, mesmerized, on occasion.
[6]

Katherine St Asaph: If there’s a Wilhelm scream in here, it’s been bastardized enough to sound like nothing. It’s a shame, because the Wilhelm scream is interesting and James Blake is not. Once again, he’s making music for people to whom spaced-out beats mean resonance, blurriness means depth and choppy tracks mean creativity, and whose idea of musical transcendence is something recorded while trespassing at dusk in a racquetball court.
[5]

Martin Skidmore: The backing here is very unusual, an immensely restrained blend of pulses and odd, unsettling noises, even almost Krustesque beeps here and there, over which he sings with some soul. I was reasonably impressed with his first, but listening to this the limitations and weaknesses of his voice strike me rather more.
[6]

Alfred Soto: So wracked with sorrow that his mecha-stutter and sob are indistinguishable, Blake’s electrified cover of a folk ditty composed by his father doesn’t rise above comfortable melancholy: holding a mug of hot tea while watching rain outside the window, that sort of thing.
[5]

Jonathan Bogart: The first time through it’s an adventure, slowly swelling into inoperability and leaving you cleansed. But after that I found myself annoyed by the linear structure and muttering “add another goddamn verse.”
[6]

Jer Fairall: There’s some real tension here in the way that the song feels like it’s increasingly on the verge of falling apart, further echoed in those unnerving “falling…falling…falling”s, that actually compliments his non-entity of a voice. So colour me sorely disappointed when, :20 from the end, the song regains its footing and glides on out just as it had began, sparing us the cacophonous payoff that might have really made this into something.
[6]