The Singles Jukebox

Flumfy-floofy…

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[5.33]

Micha Cavaseno: Guys, the new Bully single is fantastic.
[6]

Alfred Soto: Using a Leonard Cohen reference as fuel, this expensive collaboration should excite ’80s fetishes: how much did it cost to get the drums to sound so flumfy? A gnarled guitar solo aside, this ain’t exciting, not when Bobby Gillespie sounds like the dude in Cut Copy and Sky Ferreira is prevented from inhabiting the tune by singing as if by cue card. 
[6]

Brad Shoup: Like a fluorescent take on Scandal’s “The Warrior,” in places. Mostly the chorus. Ferreira fits the scheme snugly, but I get the sense it’s because she’s holding back.
[5]

Thomas Inskeep: Decent disco-y Primal single made suddenly much more “hip” and certainly notable, thanks to guest vocals from Sky Ferreira. Could use more Sky and less Bobby Gillespie.
[5]

Megan Harrington: You know what? When Miley Cyrus shrugged her inevitable Wayne Coyne collaboration on the world my first thought was not “I bet all her also rans will scramble to find aging neo-pysch casualties to be artistes with.” In fact, that thought didn’t occur to me until Sky Ferreira announced herself as both a Cyrus also ran and Primal Scream vocalist. But she shouldn’t hold all the blame for this wannabe curio. Primal Scream do know that women their age can still sing, right? 
[4]

Cassy Gress: When I first saw this, I was thinking “Primus & Sky Ferreira” and that would have been interesting! Not that this isn’t interesting, but there’s a catchiness in the music missing in the vocals. It’s something about how they both sound just a tad bit sleepy, and also the way “peace begins within” in the chorus is off-rhythm. If the rest of the song had been like that, it’d make more sense, but instead it feels like they had too many syllables for the melody and just kind of kludged it. Neither of them is an exceptionally strong singer; Sky’s voice works better in other contexts and Bobby Gillespie sounds like a floofier version of the verses in “White Wedding”. I was trying to think who would work on this, and I’ve decided it’s young Morrissey with Grimes.
[4]

Katherine St Asaph: Two draws here: the Top Gear riff sounding like it’s played on an instrument a cloud of crickets is currently descending upon, and Bobby and Sky’s air of “don’t give a fuck, including no fucks about the level of sleaze we’re producing and the degree to which this is totally play-acting.” I imagine to some people those are bad things; fortunately I don’t have to care.
[6]

Will Adams: That cresting riff — yearning over the melancholy upward progression — is really the main feature, not Gillespie nor Ferreira. It’s no wonder I warm up to them at the end, when they ditch the overstuffed lines and repeat the title to fade. Three months from now I’ll kick myself for overrating this, but gauzy uptempo synthrock like “Where the Light Gets In” triangulates my musical desires pretty neatly.
[7]

Jonathan Bogart: It’s kind of comforting to know that Bobby Gillespie hasn’t changed a whit since the last time I checked in with him more than a decade ago, or indeed since 1991. Still vampirically trying to feed off the cultural relevance of his youngers and betters, still exactly as middle-of-the-road as he always has been.
[5]