The Singles Jukebox

Unbelievable! It’s Novak Djokovic!…

[Video][Website]
[5.75]

Edward Okulicz: Martina Sorbara is one of my favourite singers, and the video makes up for not featuring her by including tennis, which I like even more than Martina Sorbara. Also, unlike the previous Solveig/Dragonette collab, which was dreadful, this is a pleasant, catchy little pop romp which emphasises both camps’ strengths. You’d even say it’s cute, though I wish Dragonette could get huge with one of their big, shiny sex-pop singles rather than eking out sterilised continental hits with dance producers. Would have been improved if Martina’s recent faux-Noi-Jerseyisms she picked up writing for Cyndi Lauper and were all over her last record had made it through, but that’s OK. If they must crossover like this, they can be this cute and I won’t mind.
[8]

Chuck Eddy: Not nearly up there with Dragonette’s slut-wave classic “I Get Around,” which made my P&J singles ballot a few years back. But those Art of Noise (via Prodigy?) “hey!”‘s hook this cutely enough.
[6]

Pete Baran: There is a sense that Martin Solveig is merely cracking out the old Fatboy Slim playbook, but this fizzes and pops like most things that involve Dragonette. Which means it won’t be a hit, but they will probably get enough soundtrack and advert action to keep their career limping on for another year.
[8]

Anthony Easton: Pretty by-the-book, but as catchy as cholera, and only half as shitty. Standard point added for hand claps.
[7]

Martin Skidmore: The singer’s voice is sort of cute, but rather monotonous, and while the chorus is decently catchy, the roughness of the production is surprising, and palls quickly.
[4]

Frank Kogan: The cynicism, caution, detachment is presented as an obvious shuck, while the Brill Building melody and Martina’s half-cute singing represent a desperate hopefulness. I’m on the borderline: this only crosses in bits and pieces from representing to feeling, the cynicism not strong enough to hurt anyone and the hope not intense enough to be engulfing; but there’s actually a tune and a singer potentially worth abandoning oneself for.
[6]

Jonathan Bogart: It wasn’t until I’d gone on to blown-out American strobe-pop and returned to this that the lean elegance of the thing, every note precisely placed, every chord separated cleanly out, dawned on me. The piled-up echoes of the bridge are no doubt the song’s calling card in the memory, but it’s the weightlessness of its opening that made everything seem suddenly right for just a moment there in the early morning.
[8]

David Katz: Remember blog-house? I do. Amidst the endless detritus of remixes, DJ sets of the same bloody songs and Uffie’s general existence lay Dragonette, electro-informed dance pop at its most purely forgettable. Her rebirth as a commercial house diva is similarly uninspiring. The backing track feels like it’s been made by a kid who’s only learnt two chords on his new instrument, and the effect might mark the only time I’ve found repetition *funny* in its single-mindedness. It’s the aural equivalent of a bus that never comes.
[1]

Kat Stevens: This type of beat is now so familiar to me that it has a mild sedative effect. Like over-the-counter opiate derivatives: pleasant, moreish, probably a bad thing in the long-run.
[5]

Katherine St Asaph: A minute of this and everything’s uncomfortably sticky, like I just got into a bath full of sugar water.
[4]

John Seroff: Thudding, snotty and not too hard to swallow. Dragonette is miles away from Robyn but the intent and style is absolutely the same. I’d appreciate a bit more ingenuity in wrapping up the theme, but this is totally acceptable, middle-of-the-road electropop.
[6]

Tom Ewing: Ingenue vocals meet clockwork club banger – the result is relentless cuteness, though oddly unhateable.
[6]