The Singles Jukebox

Back in my day, we danced outdoors…

[Video][Website]
[6.44]

Scott Mildenhall: It’s their first song not in English, so this is naturally the perfect time for this site to write about Sisters On Wire. To use a cliché though, Ieva Šèerbinskaitė doesn’t need translation to defy any language barrier. In English, the lyrics read as impressionistic slivers of isolation, and that’s just as they sound without semantic detail. Inevitably, Christine and the Queens comes to mind — the solo dance video could almost be an admission of that — but though there are overlaps across this spacious synth wilderness, “Taip Jau Gavosi” is less obviously redemptive than something like “People, I’ve Been Sad”. It’s bitter without the sweet.
[8]

Alfred Soto: The riff’s a grabber, and its woolly-headed gait approximates a marriage between slow The 1975 and a ’90s Stereolab B-side. It’s very nice. 
[5]

Will Adams: This is pretty in the same way “Somebody Else” is: melancholic synthpop with artfully placed fog, as if spritzed on with an airbrush. I wished for more of what the first 45 seconds offered, though; those clustered harmonies against the minimal backing are gorgeously delicate. What follows is an effective groove, but it feels familiar.
[6]

David Moore: Gauzy pop with a hint of retro adult contempo dorkiness that is still in vogue in the indie pop world, I guess — maybe they play this in pharmacies in Lithuania. 
[5]

Wayne Weizhen Zhang: After scouring the internet researching this song and band, I’ve been largely unable to find anything. Translations of the lyrics are nowhere to be found, and I have no idea what “Taip Jau Gavosi” is about other than dancing in a mysteriously empty parking lot. The band seems to be trolling people wondering about the origins behind the name “Sisters on Wire.” It’s all a real shame, because moody Lithuanian Spotify-core is really something that I could have gotten into.
[6]

Katherine St Asaph: My teenage self, enamored of The Knife remix of Stina Nordenstam’s “Parliament Square,” would be very disappointed to hear that, in 2020, A) y’know, pandemic B) nowadays, pitch-shifted squiggles like the ones that lead “Taip Jau Gavosi” (when will someone write a bad thinkpiece that nevertheless gives them a “millennial whoop”-esque name?) aren’t exciting but cliched. This gets better, though, more inspired by synths than syncs. On the transcendent-melancholy scale, the song’s overall too far toward melancholy, but as it builds it inches slowly back. And after the bridge it’s no longer slow, thanks to a smart deployment of 40% of the “In the Air Tonight” break.
[7]

Tobi Tella: Somewhere between haunting and nondescript, though the hook is undeniably catchy. Bonus points for the vocal chops around the bridge, a well-employed use of the trick that lets both catharsis and frustration shine through.
[6]

Kylo Nocom: Though I imagine everyone’s a bit sick of the kind of synthpop that executes dance moves in slow motion, “Taip Jau Gavosi” has a vocalist whose voice lands in the sweet spot right between ghostliness and pleasant forwardness. The writing’s pretty fab, too: lonely poetics colored with shades of “Vermillion.” And, hey, hard not to envy a song in 2020 that imagines what it’s like to be out in the city.
[7]

Leah Isobel: A garbled internet translation of “Taip Jau Gavosi”‘s lyrics offers this gem: “And I’m the only one/ Brandy on a dark street.” Like that (maybe incorrect) line, the song breathes with a rich, intoxicating loneliness. As I grow older, love sounds less sugary than it once did and more like this – like a windy night where the synth and guitar tones blur into a faded streetlamp glow, and bitterness is something I can learn to savor.
[8]