The Singles Jukebox

Not a Fefe Dobson cover (may her album be unshelved)…

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[6.88]

Katie Gill: Take a song from a concept album about weddings and add some repeating drum machine, high pitch trills, and poking piano synth and… those 1980s lady singer/songwriter comparisons Bat For Lashes always gets are just gonna keep coming. Still, once you get past the inevitable “Wuthering Heights” joke, we’re left with a tightly made piece, perfect for crying to and/or writing in your Livejournal about.
[7]

Cassy Gress: The subtle creepiness of “I Do” steps into the forefront here, though her airy falsetto wears on the ears a bit after enough repeats of the chorus.
[6]

Taylor Alatorre: A classic stretch of post-punk skittishness whose drama is heightened, and then tempered, by an array of synthesized harps. Hints of danger are scattered throughout, but are ultimately forgotten when the final wistful comedown takes over. Khan conveys a well-mannered desperation which suits this paranoid-but-not-really atmosphere, in which uncontrollable desire is reworked into an anchor of stability.
[7]

Alfred Soto: The synth moves on little cat feet, while Natasha Khan goes crazy on a Sunday afternoon thinking about the woman who warmed her bed hours ago. The mid-tempo boringness is emblematic rather than a pejorative description, a bit like a Chantal Akerman film without Delphine Seyrig’s pathological concentration on the mundane.
[6]

Anthony Easton: The syncopated, sped-up percussion before the voice is introduced has a gothic darkness, but in a slightly ironic way. The vocals, compounded with the bell tones of an electronic piano, have the overwhelming anxiety of a day spent going over everything, an anxious anti-rest. It’s almost difficult to listen to; her claims of falling apart are well represented. 
[9]

Tim de Reuse: The electronic, clawing beat is a catchy undercurrent for a track that doesn’t quite know how to use it. The verses are appropriately urgent, but the chorus seems ripped from something else completely, with twinkling harp glissandi under an echoing vocal mixed three times as loud as it ought to be. I can maybe see how this all could’ve pulled together with a better mix and a little more compositional focus, but it didn’t.
[5]

Iain Mew: I don’t mind some melodic similarities to “Daniel” because “Sunday Love” comes across as the product of fruitful refining and perfecting. The building up of a particular aesthetic helps to bring together the earthy crunch and bass and top end twinkle, combining to support Bat For Lashes in a song more magical and more painfully longing than ever.
[8]

Katherine St Asaph: Not the sort of wilting marriage song “I Do” suggested — in retrospect, Natasha Khan’s ballads were always like that — but a synthpop piece built from organ and twitch. The Bride may not end up being the soaring self-mythologizing of Two Suns or the reverse desiccation of The Haunted Man, but now I at least want to give it a chance.
[7]