Tropical shoegaze… sandalgaze???

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[3.67]

Iain Mew: I don’t know if it’s just listening right after Ride, but something in the melody and the way Zeeba sings it makes this sound like a tropical shoegaze record. Or at least a tropical Trespassers William record. It’s actually a well-matched pair of modes, and Zeeba gets across feeling and hints at something deeper with an ease that this kind of thing rarely reaches. It’s just a shame that they had to throw in that alien whistle to work against him the whole way.
[6]

Alfred Soto: Electronic whooshes, fades and dissolves, acoustic guitar for color, anonymous vocal — it’s like Madonna in 2015 playing catch-up.
[2]

Will Adams: A more substantial example of folky deep house than what we used to get, “Hear Me Now” plays like a gentle respray of an early Coldplay cut that was already pleasant to begin with. That still means it falls prey to some of the genre’s less savory trappings, namely whistling hooks.
[4]

Hannah Jocelyn: I like the sense of melancholy in the first minute and a half, and especially in the chorus, but that does not continue once the post-chorus drop happens — the chord progression resolves, followed by major-key guitar strumming and whistling. As the song continues, it devolves from a wistful campfire sing-along to what sounds like a remix of an early Coldplay song, but like the sloppy ones that radio stations used to play for “Somebody That I Used To Know.” In fact, on repeated listens, that’s exactly what “Hear Me Now” sounds like all the way through; the chorus borrows a line from “Fix You”, and the other lyrics are as nonsensical as anything Chris Martin’s ever written, from the entirety of “Yellow” to “like an eagle you circled, in perfect purple.” That’s normally not a problem with EDM, but it’s clear that this song is trying to go for something profound, and it’s just so boring.
[3]

Ryo Miyauchi: Stripped of its dance-pop parts, “Hear Me Now” at its core is already a middling folk tune that vaguely calls out to the dark. A four-on-the-floor kick does no good to make this interesting, and the twee whistling just makes it even worse.
[3]

Tim de Reuse: EDM with ambitions of being a kinder, gentler inspirational anthem — to that end, it’s cut a lot of corners and let in some sunny, delicate acoustic guitar. The restraint is admirable, but staying one hundred percent faithful to EDM structural formulas while leaving most of the mix empty just means you’re making some boring EDM. Or maybe that’s the point: when you close your eyes as that god-awful whistling synth starts to deliver the melodic hook you can just feel a mid-summer car commercial start to materialize in your mind.
[4]