The Singles Jukebox

Justbecauseit’sendingdoesn’tmeanit’sreallyending…

[Video]
[4.80]

Alfred Soto: Daft Punk + The Weeknd = daft week.
[3]

TA Inskeep: A little smoother in vibe and texture than I expected; is that Tame Impala’s influence or just Justice softening with age? Either way it works for me, as it’s still inherently French Touch-y in all the ways I love. This would’ve fit well into either Barbara Butch’s Olympics opening ceremony playlist, or DJ Myd’s Paralympics opening ceremony playlist. Vive la France!
[7]

Al Varela: This stuck to me as a personal favorite from Hyperdrama. Blinding synths beam across like a shooting star, as the clattering beat dances around it like an electronic wave pool. Kevin Parker gives Justice’s production plenty of room to move and command the atmosphere, while still being that waning voice lingering on their mistakes and regrets of the past. I’m obsessed with the way the production keeps abruptly cutting in and out after the refrain, like reality is breaking around you as those regrets start to overwhelm you. Less “crying in the club” and more “buckling under self-inflected anxiety in the club”. A familiar feeling for me, I’d say. 
[8]

Mark Sinker: With shifts and turns it does nothing with, this is a super-dainty whine that frames the singer as an unchanging yutz. Science fact about embers is that they too turn to ash, and sometimes you should just let them. 
[4]

Nortey Dowuona: Why can nobody properly layer or mix or place a snare when it comes to programming pop/pop funk? Please, can we sacrifice Kevin Parker’s limp-ass singing voice to a geyser and get Denyce Graves an extra 20 grand for her students?
[0]

Jel Bugle: I’m convinced that a lot of this kind of music already exists, like a living breathing inoffensive mass of blandness. I can’t think of any examples, because I can never remember anything like this. Who is listening to this in 2024? 
[3]

Taylor Alatorre: They’re not targeting the pleasure centers of the brain exactly, but rather the part sitting just off to the side of them, the one that reflexively causes your inner voice to mouth words such as “workmanlike” and “respectable.” Expect dividends at next year’s Grammys.
[5]

Tim de Reuse: The smartest way to use the Tame Impala Guy (whose name I refuse to look up) is to take all his Spotify algo-driven chillout playlist-iest qualities and lean hard into them; Justice spread him like mayo to kind of lubricate their unremarkable white-bread ’00s throwback to ’80s throwbacks. If you kind of squint into the gloss and focus really hard on washing the dishes while you listen, you can convince yourself you’re listening to something you really loved when you were a teenager.
[5]

Katherine St. Asaph: Alongside a couple folks from the late, lamented Cohost, I started streaming a sporadic, tiny “radio show” earlier this year. (If you’re reading this at midnight EST or thereabouts, I may actually be doing it.) The setlists are drawn from the kind of music I listen to “off-duty” and arranged by what I experience as distinct moods, two of which are called chamber of frosted glass and steelstrobe. The best way to describe them isn’t by genre (though they’re mostly electronic) but by example: “Neverender” is the exact midpoint between those two moods, and thus compelling to me. A point in this mix’s favor: the official Kaytranada and Rampa remixes waver between mid and bad.
[8]

Ian Mathers: #tfw your mom says “we have Daft Punk at home” and it’s this.
[5]