The first actual single since we loved them in ’11…
[Video][Website]
[6.14]
Brad Shoup: Library-music bass and twitchy foursquare snare raps are just the trick for me. Nagano’s a little mush-mouthed, it turns the crisp production a bit soggy, or maybe just turns this into a giant sense-document. Mudslides are earthmoving actions, too.
[7]
Iain Mew: This is good, but I hope someone turns it into the awesome rap track it’s crying out to be.
[7]
Alfred Soto: The keyboards are tiresome — so retro that they’re retro. The stuff about ice cream dripping and butterfly wings, sung in Yukimi Nagano’s chalky tones, adduces the Fisher Price goth approach.
[5]
David Sheffieck: Seemingly too locked into its straightforward groove to ever find a solid hook, though Nagano sounds as good as ever. And I know it’s right there twice in the title, but that super-compressed clap became genuinely punishing by the end: their brief pause in the outro felt like the first time I’d been able to breathe in three minutes.
[5]
Anthony Easton: Squelchy as wellies in spring mud, with a thorough understanding of how to get synths to behave, the formal qualities of this are on the right side of profound.
[6]
Cédric Le Merrer: Somewhere between a paranoid nightmare and a panic attack, this oscillates between deeply unsettling and strangely appealing. I like how the drums sound emphatically like real live drums, and carry the song forward no matter what strange synth stab or trill tries to attack them, or how freaked out Yukimi Nagano sounds.
[8]
Mallory O’Donnell: Decent little jazzy squelchy flip-flop with frippery more interesting than anything actually happening in the tune department. Extra points for not being about someone’s genitalia. That’s all it takes these days. Sad, really.
[5]