The Singles Jukebox

Do you even know who Rae Morris is? She doesn’t have a Wikipedia. I have no idea if Harry Potter is in any of her videos…

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[6.83]Anthony Easton: Where does she get that brown leather Wassily chair, and the brown carpet/bricks to match it? Also is there anything interesting left to say about tennis at night? Also, if she keeps laying on the banister like that, she might fall off. Oh, I’m supposed to be reviewing the song. The bubbling synths are as tired as the percussion. The vocals have that weird-for-weird’s-sake quality that seem very carefully studied (Newsom, Lorde, Patrick Wolf, et al). This will get discussion on all the right blogs, using words like unique or ethereal or beautiful or new, but it has been done before; even the angels must be grounded, pretty fades, and banal is forever.
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Katherine St Asaph: Ariel Rechtshaid and wallflower ascendant discover the sublime.
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Alfred Soto: Credit Ariel Rechtshaid for the buoyant, twinkling electronics, but praise Rae Morris for singing from an ionosphere of desire and trembling.
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David Sheffieck: Subtle and shapeshifting, the production is an ideal complement for Morris’s vocal, which becomes by turns throaty, longing, ethereal. It’s almost too mannered to leave a strong impression, but manages to find a sort of quiet power in the way every element glides along in sync.
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Scott Mildenhall: Most of the lyrics here feel apocryphal in ways that seem unintentional as often as intentional (the tenses and pronouns are all over the shop), but when the chorus arrives, and the gloom departs for a drop down to the barest of backings, Morris looks you/herself in the eye, and there’s the clarity of the kind of direct questioning that’s already sure of its answer.
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Will Adams: This is a song about a narrator unfurling for what may be the first time. The opening, abrasive bassline plucks in half-steps, implying an ominous chord progression of tonic minor-to-Neapolitan. But then, more instruments enter to recontextualize the progression as a warmer, more familiar iii-IV pattern. From then, the song takes off, opening up like someone breaking the surface of a deep pool. “Do you even know that I keep everything in?” asks Rae in the chorus. The question seems foolish at first — if she keeps everything in, of course you wouldn’t know — but soon becomes amazing when it’s clear that the song is meant to be that confession, that poured heart, that catharsis. Here’s one for the introverts who hope for that same courage.
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