Son Lux ft. Lorde – Easy (Switch Screens)
InB4 collaborations with Son Ribs, Son Tennis Court, and Son White Teeth Teens…
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Brad Shoup: The original was performed as desiccated cabaret; the addition of Lorde evokes the image of a swamp monster, slowly roused. Those wheedly pings get doubled with fingersnaps, and they become stars blinking out. But the biggest bang comes after a fumbled false ending: prog ascension erupting into blackout shredding. It has almost nothing to do with the text, or Lorde, or even the concept of relative difficulty. But it’s fun.
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Alfred Soto: Have you heard Neneh Cherry’s Blank Project? This track has similar percussive manipulations, garnished with mid ’90s Mitchell Froomisms like horn honks. The best tracks on her debut showed Lorde comfortable as found sound; here she burnishes her cred.
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Iain Mew: Son Lux gets the potential in Lorde’s voice for creeping unease, and from there he does make it sound easy, setting up the space for every sqwark and sad whistle to sink in deep before a deliciously dark blast of noise to make explicit the doom it was all headed towards.
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Rebecca A. Gowns: It’s lovely to hear Lorde’s voice being put to good use. Her timbre is husky, yet also paper-thin; it doesn’t have the ethereal nature of Dolores O’Riordan, nor the power of someone like Fiona Apple (i.e., more mature voices and suggestions of Lorde’s own possibilities). Yet, as it is now, it’s got a good lazy way about it, which is refreshing to hear, at least, in this age of hyper-production and precise coaching. Give that voice some simple lyrics to float, and back it with the more sophisticated production capabilities of Son Lux, and it’s a dream — I feel like I’ve been transported from the eye-rolling diary entries of “Royals” and “Team” into a lush netherworld swamp. Here’s hoping that Lorde will discover more magical environments for her voice to travel to after this one.
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Daniel Montesinos-Donaghy: Lorde has a Grammy now and photobombs Taylor Swift’s instagram these days, which is a roundabout way to say that she is a successful pop star. What is forgotten after hearing and puzzling over and debating “Royals” the first few thousand times is just how stark it is — a skeletal teenage sneer that aligns financial emptiness with sonic emptiness. It echoes where others rattle, an unusual sound on Billboard. Son Lux is a collaborator to practitioners of just-off artistry: genre filmmaker Rian Johnson, the avant-rap label Anticon, geographical freak-folky Sufjan Stevens. Lorde snuggles amongst these collaborators with her performance on “Easy”, a mumbled chillout track performed like an uneasy howl. It overstays its welcome, but as feel-bad background music it does its work. As another act in Lorde’s upending of pop star convention, it’s pretty damn interesting.
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Anthony Easton: The jazz noise this is brewing hasn’t been avant since Ayler in the ’70s, but it is a beautiful example of that kind of racket. Lorde has decided her voice is not having a voice, pushing through the avatar until it explodes into an ingratiating strangeness, layering the rest of the music into something genuinely ambitious. I am excited for her next move.
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Megan Harrington: During U2’s Boy tour, the band would frequently encore with songs they’d already played in their setlist, a gesture likely born of a combination of limited catalog and keen narcissism. The last minute of “Easy (Switch Screens)” is an encore of the previous three minutes. It’s one thing to regurgitate in front of an audience cheering for more. It’s another entirely to elaborate on a song composed of loops with — oh, another loop.
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Will Adams: The horn stabs fill the space created by the clattering drums, and the wheezing organ rounds out the dank atmosphere. It’s a beautiful backdrop for Lorde’s croak, suggesting not a what-could-have-been had her snappier beats not been eaten up; rather, it promises a darker tone for future work. However, the song doesn’t cover much ground, lumbering for too long until stumbling into its amazing ending.
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If Lorde does become like Fiona Apple I will be so, so happy.
One wrong step and she’s Tanita Tikaram though…..
Love this so much more than Lorde’s own music. I’ve always been a fan of her voice so it’s nice hearing it somewhere else than in her own songs.
The horns are everything.