The Singles Jukebox

Back and reunited at long last… according to some of us, anyway.

[Video][Website]
[5.25]

Alfred Soto: Mumbled pseudo-menace. Piano’s pretty. Guitar’s not bad.
[4]

Katherine St Asaph: I am the one remaining person who still really, really likes 3D’s voice and claustrophobia, thinks “Dissolved Girl” is a classic song, liked both 100th Window and Heligoland (look, another spot to plug Maya Jane Coles on there!), so of course I’m going to like this Mezzanine-via-“Karmacoma” spec fic, no matter how much self-parodic piano glumness and ridiculousness like “she’s so soft and ticklish” it contains. I’m just going to return to other songs first.
[6]

Iain Mew: Don’t do what I did and read the YouTube comments comparing this to a specific Radiohead song, or you will get stuck hearing it as Thom Yorke in sludge.
[5]

Micha Cavaseno: Massive Attack are my least favorite group in the history of mankind who have singles I adore (“Angel,””Protection,” “Karmacoma”). Massive Attack make portentous stadium rock versions of lounge music vaguely informed by dance music and hip-hop, always clinging to the talented of their guest vocalists to steer them through the storm lest they serve as a Soul II Soul for film students who want to explain to you exactly why Kubrick was so incredible. 3D has always sounded like the sleaze he was rumored to be, but here he sounds more like Thom Yorke trying to scare kids than anything. You’ve got pointless rock squall guitar, minimal dubby drums, and ‘spooky piano’ of the most rubbish quality. No wonder Tricky only shows up for 8 or 12 bars submerged in rock salt, disinterested in listening to old men mining the same music they used to do a generation ago (not that he’s any less guilty these days). Who even wants something like this anymore?
[1]

Cassy Gress: Oh man.  There is not much that could go wrong for me with this setup.  Dark, rainy, bassy piano, classic crackly trip hop drums, a Tricky growl, the Gm-Dm-E7 chord progression with the descending bass, the sudden rough guitar line towards the end – songs like this speak to me, as corny as that sounds.  Only complaint is that 3D’s voice sounds a little weak and reedy next to Tricky’s, but that’s nothing.
[9]

Jonathan Bogart: This would have fit perfectly on one of the mixes I was making between 2002 and 2006, a golden age for atmospheric genre-blurring music for grownups. If it feels slightly more unnecessary in 2016, that may have more to do with the expansion of my own listening habits than with any tension between history and sound.
[7]

Edward Okulicz: The piano is a numbing repetitive fight against quicksand, and I’d cross the street if I heard a passerby talking like 3D. By contrast, the last minute would be terrific as a Portishead song.
[3]

Brad Shoup: Have not been able to make it to the words — it’s about drugs, maybe? — but that doomy guitar arpeggiation just past the halfway point is great. I would’ve loved more audible breathing, but on the whole, this sounds like a slow-jam program that wants your soul.
[7]