The Singles Jukebox

Pop, to two decimal places.

Lorde – Yellow Flicker Beat

No flicker, just beat. Pure beat.


[Video][Website]
[6.50]

Edward Okulicz: Paul Epworth has a very recognisable sound (the drums here are straight out of something he might have given Florence + The Machine) but largely avoids the critical brickbats that other samey producers get. “Yellow Flicker Beat” needs no particular help to work because it’s a showcase for Lorde getting lots of different things out of her voice: weird tension to start; adorably goth-y schtick over Those Drums and a level of menace just right for the young adults reading books; and watching films and listening to soundtracks from the Hunger Games franchise. Lorde also knows what makes a teen scrawl lyrics on schoolbooks.
[7]

Iain Mew: Lorde takes some of the sonics of album highlight “Ribs”, combines that with a further exploration into the creeping unease that she brought to her song with Son Lux, and comes up with a spooky anthem. Its rough humming sliding into synth squeals as the chorus hits is a highlight, like the lights flickering to reveal the monster hidden in the room, in a frenzy of glimpsed action. It reminds me of the trick Alt-J pull at their best, of songs which foreground atmosphere but with beats that still carry powerful instant momentum.
[9]

Anthony Easton: Lorde runs low and smooth, her apocalyptic thoughts are delicate, requiring the ennui of modern cities, refusing a history past 1986. Her brand has a contemporary edge. A producer seeing the numbers, and thinking that she was working against the consumerism and spectacle that Hunger Games was, would think that their might be some overlap. This track proves that was a mistaken assumption. 
[4]

Alfred Soto: Starting with a single wobbling sustained note, “Yellow Flicker Beat” honors the title, bringing the creeps and fulfilling the difficult task of interpolating the movie’s tropes without turning them to hash. A couple of gear grinds, whistling synth, and the line, “This is the start of how it all ends” given the appropriate menace. Bringing the Fever Ray sound into the playback systems of girls and boys worldwide — not bad.
[7]

Abby Waysdorf: As Siouxsie Sioux learned before her, a bit of a pop-dance beat can make a dark song particularly special. It’s that beat, coming in on the first chorus and lingering throughout the rest of the song, that encapsulates Lorde’s bridging of modern and retro. In some ways, it makes it her most contemporary/mainstream song yet, with the little tweaks and electro flourishes sitting well amongst the electronic dominance of the current top 40. In other ways, it would sound perfectly at home somewhere between Siouxsie and the Banshees and Xmal Deutschland, hiding its catchiness in low-toned vocals and a vague air of menace and blood. I need to find where I put my stompy boots- I have a feeling I could pull them off as going-out-wear now.
[8]

Megan Harrington: Soundtracks are low risk dumping grounds for pragmatic experimentations with the direction of your sound. The Dark Lorde became an arena act before she had the material to fill it and listening to “Yellow Flicker Beat” what I most hear is how great the lights show will be, how perfectly this matches her soft goth costumes and stage prowl, how nicely this will jut up against her more pure pop fare.
[8]

Thomas Inskeep: Well, of course 17-year-old Lorde’s got the first single from and has curated the new Hunger Games soundtrack: the biggest audience for these films is, ostensibly, teenage girls. And her goth-pop sensibility seems to sync up nicely with the films’ ethos. (Disclaimer: I’ve neither read the books nor seen any of the films; as an almost-44-year-old man, I am most definitely not in the chief Hunger Games target audience.) Fortunately, this continues the path blazed by Pure Heroine. I was surprised that this is produced by Paul Epworth (Adele, U2), because it’s most definitely of a piece with Lorde’s debut album. (Joel Little is just on co-writing duties here.) I guess that’s a credit to Epworth, then, that this sounds so Lorde. But even more a credit to Lorde herself, who feels increasingly fully-formed as an artist while still a teenager. 
[7]

Jer Fairall: I find the rueful twist that frequently sneaks into her voice, like a permanent bored-adolescent scowl, far more charming than her prematurely lauded adolescent poetry or her underfed melodies. Opening with a minute-and-a-half of near-acappella, “Yellow Flicker Beat” calls too much attention her flaws before spending the remaining time smothering her strengths under a half-EDM/half-orchestral bombast. An actual flickering beat may have been a better way to go. 
[4]

Brad Shoup: I was hoping that moan meant Lorde’s ready to make full body music, but it’s not quite time for her to go in. But she’s got the closing-credits game down: crawl with malevolent triumph. The synths pull all kinds of faces, the drums tock like a doomsday clock. This is millions of miles away from the cracked suburbs that gave her hits, and she changes her scenery with aplomb.
[6]

Will Adams: The opening, in which Lorde’s voice is so close that you can hear the overtones weaving in and out, is chilling. And then the choir of supplementary Lordes joins in; the danger increases. And then the drums crash in; the song is thrown back into the realm of the ordinary.
[5]

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