Chase and Status – Let You Go
Anything Pendulum can do…
[Video][Website]
[6.25]
Hazel Robinson: Oh for fuck’s sake, Chase and Status, Pendulum were always going to turn into a big stupid rock act but that doesn’t mean you have to. It takes until halfway through when the ridiculous bass dramatics that make Against All Odds such an awesome album for storming around late at night to to sweep in. Good enough, but I really hope the rest of the new stuff will have more rhythmic dickery to the balls-out lairiness.
[8]
Frank Kogan: Deep and dramatic growling embedded in rock power chords. I’ve spent the last two decades mostly hating such stuff, but I don’t hate it on principle; in fact, I’m a sucker for the dark and dramatic, even when it’s just kitsch for boys. I think I don’t like it mainly when it’s slow and weighed-down with leaden gestures. Well, this one’s plenty slow, but it gets me, the deep pounding and the high techno atmospherics. Dark metal where I wasn’t expecting it.
[7]
Jonathan Bogart: Unexceptional (and unexceptionable) burbling house backing, a surprisingly powerful vocal from someone Google tells me was an X-Factor reject, and then it just slips into neutral, coasts, and dies. I’m sure an extended dance mix would be the best way to hear this song, but I’m not sure it give us any more than we already have.
[7]
Martin Skidmore: He’s a tremendous singer, powerfully passionate and exciting, and the production duo provide a comparably big backing, with dramatically orchestrated urgent beats. One of the most rousing dance tracks of the year, and the best thing I’ve heard from Chase & Status.
[9]
David Raposa: Someone give Mali a Mojito and a handjob, and get Chase and Status a dude diva with a little less emo in his vocal vom to ride this beat.
[4]
Mallory O’Donnell: Really, this could have shone as the UK’s entry to Eurovision this year. What it’s doing during the regular season is a mystery. Mali is apparently some kind of grunge-metal refugee drugged and exposed to a relentless bombardment of gay gospel-house records, but he rides the… erm… beat like he was born to be alive. Or like his roommates have just eaten the last of his leftover pizza. Which is all the more puzzling because the song itself is really little more than an extended bridge erected purely for the purpose of getting Mali to the synth-bounce freakout that even Chase & Status themselves seem to be in a hurry to get through. Then there’s the horrible part where they thrash around like some kind of robo-trance Tool. For Mr. Chase or Mr. Status, whichever of you might be reading this, I have only the following five words: you, this, FYR Macedonia, 2011.
[4]
John Seroff: “Let You Go” sounds like the cockeyed stab of an anxiety attack feels: imperative, panicked and disorienting. Histrionic in the extreme and wildly rambling, this owes an odd debt to hair metal. It’s not like I’ve much cared for past Chase and Status Jukes, but at least they weren’t mistakable for house remixes of White Lion B-Sides.
[4]
Anthony Easton: One of those rare cases where too many cooks made something absolutely delicious — paranoid and slightly manic stalker anthem that makes all previous attempts at the genre profoundly creepy.
[7]