The Singles Jukebox

Accompanied by quite the heavenly score, though.

[Video][Website]
[8.57]

Hazel Southwell: Didn’t this… already come out? It was great then and still is, a casual, flippant sound put together with the military-grade precision of an outfit for attending your ex’s wedding. Every flourish is is a patient giggle, artfully dropped into conversation before you finally get to the part of a first date where you can just agree you want to fuck. It’s confident and floral and a little bit filthy.
[9]

Katie Gill: Fun, sultry, catchy r&b/pop. It’s very telling that “Ungodly Hour” is the fourth single from the album of the same name, the point where most artists are kind of scraping the bottom for which non-single tracks to release, and yet it feels fresh and catchy enough to have been a first single. Ungodly Hour the album has been racking up all sorts of praise and end-of-the-year list placements and “Ungodly Hour” the song helps show how it deserves all of those accolades.
[8]

Thomas Inskeep: Chloe x Halle do a Disclosure record (the brothers produced, and co-wrote with CxH), and I’m into it: in the sisters’ hands this is less housey and more progressive R&B. Very much RIYL Dawn Richard.
[8]

Rachel Saywitz: Chloe x Halle know how to make self motivation sound sensuous and tempting. “Ungodly Hour” is the zenith of their positive messaging, dripping encouraging phrases into our dry eyes with the velocity of the last few minutes of a downpour, when the sky has exhausted all emotion and begins to open up and accept its place in Earth’s cycle. “Ungodly Hour” lives in those in between states that occur after a heavy emotional breakdown or a wave of panic, coaxing us out of the storm and into a lighter, dewy morning. 
[9]

Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: A song so self-evidently excellent that it feels trivializing to write much about it. It’s the best demonstration of why Chloe and Halle work best in tandem — their slightly different vocal ranges and timbral approaches meld together, and the slightly unearthly quality of that combination fits perfectly with Disclosure’s spaceship R&B, which has rarely sounded more fitting.
[9]

Edward Okulicz: So cool, so sleek, so aqueous, “Ungodly Hour” all but lubes up your ears on the way in. It could have been a 00s throwback R&B thing, it could have been a pumping house track, but instead, it decides to kind of be both. And it wouldn’t normally matter because of how great this sounds, but the lyrics are fantastic and thoughtful too. No actual seduction has ever gone as well as this song in the way it sets up the tension and releases it.
[9]

Austin Nguyen: The synths drip like they’ve been dipped in fondue, and the strings are draped as if they were lace bed curtains: Waiting for someone to change (“I don’t have the time / To teach you how to love all over again”), to commit because you know your self-worth (“Are you givin’ all that you could give?”) has never sounded so decadent. Chloe and Halle have melted every “u up?” text left on read into a heaven that asks for more than “talk” and “games” to stand at its gate, but take one step in the right direction, and you’ll be standing next to the divine.
[8]