The Singles Jukebox

It’s Vaguely Related To Recent Children’s-Book Adaptations Day! First up, an unlikely Vine hit…

[Video][Website]
[2.50]

Jer Fairall: No, your fifth-grade book report on Peter Pan would not make a good song.
[1]

Iain Mew: The lack of any adornment is initially compelling, and that stretches to the way Ruth B sings it as well. It puts a lot of emphasis on the lyrics, though, in which she fails to wring much out of an endless string of Peter Pan references. The low point is a couplet that both tries to rhyme “woods” and “Hook” and places the characters as always on the run but bored and playing.
[2]

Katherine St Asaph: There’s an unadorned quality to this that reminds me of Amanda Perez’s “Angel,” the sort of thing it’s pleasantly surprising to remember charted. But “unadorned” does not alone a virtue make. The problem isn’t that “Peter Pan” was written in Vine-length intervals; all songwriting (or writing, or craft) looks that banal if broken down to its mechanical steps. The problem is how literal it all is.
[4]

Alfred Soto: She lost me the moment she sang about the man on the moon ignoring her. She doesn’t even fuck with the title’s gender play. Après lui, les références a Peter Pan.
[1]

Brad Shoup: She lost me until the “cloud of green” bit. Still, she’s got to get a better strain if she wants better Peter Pan hallucinations.
[1]

Anthony Easton: I like that she’s from my hometown. Edmonton’s jazz program, which she went to, is pretty well known for piano and vocals, mostly very dull. The town itself has an indie singer-songwriter scene and has not really discovered irony yet. There is also a substantial East African diaspora, especially Eritrean and Somali, who do some interesting things in the backrooms of restaurants after eleven. I have heard more than a few recitals that sound like this, and I am not suggesting the diaspora should sound one way, but the Edmonton sound could be roughed up a bit. Also, you can tell where Ruth cut to make a six-second single. 
[4]

Cassy Gress: “Lost Boy” drags on way too long, and Ruth B clips off the ends of phrases oddly, such as “Neverland is home to lost boys like me / And lost boys like me are free.” There are plenty of other phrases where she lets the note end more naturally, which means that that cut-off is intentional; maybe she’s trying to sound like a little kid? If there is an emotional center to this, it’s lost on me.
[2]

Juana Giaimo: I can’t tolerate the sugary metaphors about loneliness and the hopefulness in the drama of running away, but I know that my 15-year-old self would have found some company in all of it.
[5]