The Singles Jukebox

Not the kind you keep on the shelf with the Precious Moments cats and commemorative plates.

[Video][Website]
[6.00]

Anthony Easton: Post-house, slightly manic (not nearly louche enough) reworking of “The Rhythm of Life” from Sweet Charity, with all the fun replaced with a kind of economic inertia and orientalist traces yet doesn’t seem racist. It does make me wonder where Fosse is; his coke comedowns would be a lot more interesting. 
[3]

Alfred Soto: They’ve got interesting stuff going on with the production and synths: someone’s been listening to Remain in Light and coating the drums in expensive keyboards. It’s too long and the vocals keep me seated, but for once “British indie band” is not an opprobrium. 
[6]

Iain Mew: Is there that much to celebrate in taking a different sonic approach to indie when it’s pretty much just combining what Friendly Fires and MGMT were doing a decade ago? I don’t know, but the soundscapes and flashes of wit in the verses stand up in whatever context, before the chorus stacks too many pieces too incoherently.
[5]

Adaora Ede: Psych indie pop attempting to veer towards the territory of Tame Impala before they stopped being Tame Impala rather than the self-proclaimed ‘grittier” sound Glass Animals has been aiming for. The faux lo-fi filter is reminiscent of the little bit of dirt under my nails after a long day of being filthy, and the percussion extends “adventurous” to mean a low key tambourine beat in the white British band sense, but a jarring synth outro always deserves at least [2] extra points. Yeah, indietronica is the most appropriate sobriquet for whatever sound these guys are trying so hard to box themselves into. A decent song can transcend the boundaries of 2009-2013 if you really believe and don’t doubt your genre.
[6]

Cassy Gress: This sounds like it could neatly be filed alongside “Over and Over” and “Ruby” and other classics of ’00s Brit pop-rock. I heard the fantastic percussion riff that opens the song and expected Dave Bayley would have an annoying voice because that sort of thing seems to always happen. Although it remains airy, it gains a neat hard tightness just before the chorus. I’d just chop off that piano coda at the end; it doesn’t seem to add much.
[8]

Scott Mildenhall: This is not “Stressed Out” because it isn’t trying to cultivate or monetise an illusion of generational sentiment. Instead, it literally is about someone pretending they’re an airplane in the night sky like shooting stars — as it turns out, not the kind of outsider that will find strength in numbers. Coupled with the tie-in website that’s been made for him, there’s a hint of unpleasantness about “Life Itself”. First-person pop music not meant to represent the singer is always welcome in an era where its ecosystem seems to demand literalism, and all the more when the characterisation is uncharitable, but here it feels a bit like a proxy for laughing at people. It’s lucky, then, that that first-person angle keeps things nonjudgemental, and keeps that beneath the surface. Above it is an inventive production with an ever-rising fever and soaring chorus, and if it’s all taken as a dispassionately tragic portrait, it works exceptionally well.
[8]