The Singles Jukebox

Just gonna hijack this tagline to say “Chick Fit” was awesome and should have been a Number One. Ahem.

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[6.70]

Jonathan Bogart: They were always pitched as grown women in a machine built for girls, which means they’ve aged into their role with much more grace than their peers aged out of it. “One Strike” has the sort of continuity with their own past that comeback singles in recent years by Destiny’s Child and original-recipe Sugababes (both of which I loved; I too am grown) could not. If it sounds overly immaculate and emotionally unruffled, at least they always did.
[8]

Alfred Soto: Readers for whom the tabloid psychodramas between Nicole Appleton and Liam Gallagher will thrill to the well-modulated rage, but Appleton’s coarsened voice is the impressive part. Sounding like Christina Amphlett, she seethes as the electronics fade behind a mixing vanishing point, which was All Saints’ trick in 1998. But don’t forget the novelty of those rim taps.
[7]

Cassy Gress: I wanted to say “this is an angrier ‘Pure Shores’,” but I think that’s my biggest issue with it, is it’s not angry.  It’s called “One Strike,” and it’s about the dissolution of a bad-to-abusive relationship, and it mostly just sounds… calm. Sounding calm is sort of a feature, not a bug, with All Saints, but I think it works against them here.
[5]

Anthony Easton: The “ooh ah watch you go by” section, at the very end, would have made a perfect hook, and I am not sure why it was just used as a coda. 
[6]

Iain Mew: As smooth as “Pure Shores” or “Black Coffee,” but nothing like as lush. The restraint makes it easy not to notice, but it works for a song which is about the moment when everything falls apart, except that you were waiting for it all along and had a chance to work out what to do afterwards. It sits in the moment of just trying to fade everything out and gather back together, and it flows with a tinge of relief.
[7]

Will Adams: Polite synth washes set the scene for a polite midtempo number, and the moving lyrics — about instantaneous life change, from light to fire — get blurred by the major chords and pleasant harmonies.
[6]

Leonel Manzanares de la Rosa: The first verse, with the clicking percussion and the pleasant vocal harmonies, hinted at a more interesting track, and then it all got flattened out by the chorus. The second chorus, though, regains some of that strength with that great muted riff, and that outro left me wondering if it would be better just having them jam to that beat all the way. Still, it’s good to find the girls in good musical shape, despite not being around for a decade. They sound liberated, and even when this is a break-up song, you can hear the relief. Maybe it’s the relief of eliminating such a prick like Liam Gallagher from your life. 
[6]

Brad Shoup: The synths flash like distant summer lightning, the chorus has the raps of real drumsticks and percussive guitar. They’ve made a St. Lucia song, only with the kinds of sideways melodic moves made by singers who didn’t return just to bored.
[7]

Edward Okulicz: Shaznay Lewis is an underappreciated songwriter, but she needs her group to give her songs life, or rather, death, because she sounds like she cares. The soulless relay of Natalie and Nicole Appleton made the group sound tougher than it was. They’ve more or less stayed within their wheelhouse, but the world has turned and ended up back where they left off this time. The verses are loaded with subtle hooks so I can forgive that perfunctory chorus. Now I just need to get over the fact that it’s been longer since their last album than the one before that….
[8]

Katherine St Asaph: “One Strike” really shows the gap between All Saints and a hypothetical girl-group counterpart today; there’s no surging beat, no overpumped chorus, no vocal polish, no “victim-to-victory” theme, or at least not one without complications. Everything’s poppy but understated. Give “One Strike” to a current act and it wouldn’t be quite so understated; then again, it wouldn’t be quite so unheard. The title is awkward because the more fluid phrase is “one hit.”
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