The Singles Jukebox

PET SHOP BOYS - AXIS
[6.82]

Business mythological…

Jer Fairall: “I Feel Love” without Donna’s ice-melting touch, or maybe some early 90s club hit minus the big “3 A.M. Eternal”/”Rhythm is a Dancer”/”No Limit”-style chorus, this broody, thumping track sounds like it could have come from just about any era during the PSB’s existence except for maybe our sorry Guettized one. If the Boys themselves barely sound present here, their cool austerity still completely guides this in spirit.
[7]

Anthony Easton: Fashionable, and interesting for how it has stripped away almost all vocals, which really was the purpose of the PSB existing. I am yet to be convinced that interesting means good.
[5]

Iain Mew: Sounding like someone involved in the single somewhere is having fun is already a big improvement on the singles from the last album. The results are mostly just gently pleasing, but some of the fine details, the evolving sounds and the headphone-ready panning, are great. The brief bit of hard distortion towards the end reminding me of Capsule may not be placing the original source, but it’s a highlight regardless.
[7]

Daniel Montesinos-Donaghy: On “Axis,” Mr Tennant and Lowe are happily nudging the listener in the ribs, reminding them that they watched electronic music blossom from humble beginnings, splinter off into subcategories and proceed to conquer the world. Does this give them the license to indulge every techno and electro whim they have? In a way, yes, because the way they inherit familiar tropes — buzz-saw synths, robot chants, head-nod percussion — and make them sound vital is a lot of fun and a very Pet Shop Boys thing to do. More an act of strategy than anything, but rarely does a planned status reminder come off as well as this song.
[7]

Brad Shoup: Into the fray, with a fidgety bassline and a giddy-dumb hook. A dancefloor comeback that bends time.
[8]

Scott Mildenhall: “My name is Christopher Sean, but everybody calls me Chris.” One of the best backward-looking, forward-moving dance tracks put out by a duo partial to eyecatching headwear in a long while. It sounds like the soundtrack to a film about a dystopian future where people have to race futuristic cars around futuristic CGI tracks for some reason or another: relentless — Very Relentless, even — foreboding, and most importantly, exciting. Pet Shop Boys have a liking for following up one album with a reaction to it, and if the reinvigoration of “Axis” is reflective of Electric than that should not only bear out once more, but with spectacular results.
[8]

Alfred Soto: Two consecutive dud albums – being boring is not what we expect of Tennant-Lowe. “Axis” returns us to love and dancing, a look backwards to a time when several strands of thump synergized. Want a strand of “Trans-Europe Express”? It’s in here. Rattling post-disco Patrick Cowley? Check. Basic Harold Faltermeyer keyboard pads? Yup. In other words, a true axis. Slip this between Lindstrøm and Disclosure and somebody might notice.
[7]

Ian Mathers: I mean, this is fine for what it is (if not terribly distinctive), but why have Neil Tennant if you’re not going to use him?
[5]

Crystal Xia: I get that Pet Shop Boys are the ones who started it’s all, but it’s hard to get excited about “Axis” when it feels like artists like GRUM and Fred Falke have been taking this to a new level. Something interesting and new sounding finally happens around the three minute mark, but it’s too late to revive the track.
[5]

Edward Okulicz: Nothing since Very has been as propulsive as this; the shock of a PSB single without much in the way of Tennant on it is a relief because his lyrical wizardry has frayed a bit. But just because his schtick is stale, that doesn’t mean that there’s not plenty of other things he and Lowe can do. Think of this as a clearing of the drawing board; it’s a whizz through techno from Kraftwerk and Moroder to… whoever today is still drawing from them and having #1 hits, if you know what I mean. That’s a compliment — “Axis” sounds modern and sleek and has bigger hooks than anything off their last two albums with barely a word in it. It sounds like a fanfare portending the return of blood in the veins of two of pop’s true geniuses.
[8]

Sabina Tang: A heartening return to form after the last album, which was sleepy and a bit rubbish. (I like downtempo PSB, mind you, and was just as excited at the equivalent point in Elysium’s promo cycle, so full judgment is deferred until July’s crop of disco lasers.)
[8]

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KE$HA FT. WILL.I.AM - CRAZY KIDS (REMIX)
[4.58]

Album sales in the toilet? Buy a will.i.am verse and your score will be too. Limited time only!

Anthony Easton: Ke$ha as always flirted with earnestness, and positioned her partying as a kind of self-actualization. It was hinted at, never quite made explicit, but it was kind of a road-of-excess, Blakean thing. The interesting bit about that is that she never let the inspirational process fall over the genuinely pleasurable bits. It was a bonus. Making it the main course — and adding will.i.am — kind of ruins the meal.
[4]

Will Adams: When will his reign of terror end? Never mind the whistling (I’d rather not talk about it), someone please explain to me who decided it was a good idea to replace one of Ke$ha’s sharp-tongued verses for will.i.am’s dribble. He loses a point for “boobies” alone (though to be fair he gains it back with the mumbling bit, which is genuinely funny). The song itself is mediocre, another in a line of Ke$ha’s mission statement and another in a line of a build-drop template composed of two disparate parts held together by Scotch tape. It’s not nearly as crazy as the title wants it to be.
[3]

Alfred Soto: Her career fading a bit, she turns to the track with a redundant will.i.am bit and revs up the riffage. Who needs this when “Die Young” and “We R Who We R” exist?
[4]

Rebecca A. Gowns: I’m one of those people that adored Warriorwhen it was released — it’s just a fun set of songs. So I’ve heard this song several times by this point (and yeah, this is super close to the album version; as is typical lately, the “remix” just consists of a VERY lazy will.i.am. verse being shoved into the middle for 25 seconds). My seasoned review of “Crazy Kids” is as follows: the whistling sounds as if it’s being performed by an asthmatic, the guitar parts are dreary, it’s full of that “youth!!” marketing flavor that’s all over the radio, and the song is not NEARLY crazy enough. The verses are fine enough to dance to, but even then, it’s still warmed-over Far East Movement. The song as a whole has too many sleepy parts to really get a crowd moving; frankly, those parts are not even rousing enough for people to pull out their lighters (or cell phones) and sway them slowly. 1 point for being dull but serviceable, 2 points for being a Ke$ha song, after all.
[3]

Daniel Montesinos-Donaghy: Despite the successes of “We R Who We R”, the underlined Up With People approach in Ke$ha’s music has never successfully aligned with her most famed aesthetic - the spirit-drenched mix of goofy rapping and standardized four-on-the-floor beats. Her optimism isn’t at odds with her flippant club persona, but rarely have they clicked successfully, with one overpowering the other. But suddenly on the “Crazy Kids” remix, everything makes sense. The verses’ muffled techno programming allows Ke$ha and guest will.i.am to enjoy the spoils of their silliness, the latter seeming more human than he has in years. This gives way to the chorus’s mix of strumalong guitars and appropriately tribalistic drums, the setting for the artist to build a community out of the clubhoppers, make-out kids and weekend warriors: “We are! We are we are!” The repetition of ‘we’ above all else makes it a mantra, a charmingly naive message of inclusion topped off with a whisper: “WE ARE THE CRAZY PEOPLE.” The whisper, straight from a theatre-kid playbook but undoubtedly effective, seals the deal of inclusion. The bridge (returning to her apocalyptic imagery from “Die Young” and “Out Alive”) acknowledges that there may be little more to her politics than to gather people together for celebrations, but even that is enough in a world spinning out of control: “This is all we’ve got/And then it’s gone.”
[8]

Brad Shoup: I’d like to add a point to my Mariah/Miguel score, please. I forgot the no-whistling curve.
[4]

Jer Fairall: Ke$ha remains, to me, a one-trick pony whose one trick I never cared much for in the first place, though I’ll give it up a bit for will.i.am’s “speaking in a mumble” bit—the only time he’s ever made me laugh on purpose.
[4]

Katherine St Asaph: Lots of pop stars start or moonlight as session writers, but it’s only ever brought up on two occasions: when they’re trying to break out, the “she’s written for Britney!” script; or when pundits want to prove their authenticity with the trusty Procrustean rubric “she writes her own songs!” (As always, always she.) Everything else is just assumed to be part of the artist’s grand 360-deal vision — which can be misleading. The chorus to “Crazy Kids” is so clearly a Kesha Sebert work for hire: a pretty, melodic clarion call to whoever you are, singable by whoever you’ve got: Avril, Selena, Britney, Katy, Amy out of Karmin had she not reached her “hello” limit. Ke$ha took this one herself — maybe under duress — and because Ke$ha can’t yet release a single that’s entirely fluttery plaint, it’s awkwardly grafted onto a dirty bit, with a will.i.am verse grafted onto that for the single. (Give Will this: that muffled shutting-up of an ending is probably fanservice for lots of people, and he knows it.) Session writing isn’t inherently bad, and Sebert’s very good at it; that intro “hello” is some Lionel Richie shit, but to a kid alone with the airwaves, it probably sounds like her fairy godmother. The verses are identikit$ha, but they fill their time. It’s just that none of this, content or construction, is crazy.
[5]

David Lee: will.i.am is definitely one of those assholes who likes making Roller Coaster Tycoon POV videos in which unfinished roller coasters pull their passengers to thrilling heights only to fling them into the air and kill them. It wouldn’t be an endeavor all that different from his work of late. Like “Scream and Shout,” this presents a buildup that never achieves any kind of recognizable, cathartic chorus. I shouldn’t be surprised, though, since will.i.am seems to have a knack for making bland party anthems. Only the Ke$ha parts of “Crazy Kids” - no, not the rapped bits that are covered in will.i.am’s fingerprints - redeem it from total failure. They make up about 40% of this remix so it gets a
[4]

Crystal Xia: The original without will.i.am is one of my favorite songs of last year, probably my favorite album cut off of Warrior. It features a lot of things that I am really into: dumb and probably needless whistling; acoustic guitar serving more of a rhythm role; Ke$ha faux-rapping about her coochie in her perfect bratty intonation; and that grounded “Like a G6”-esque beat in the verses. Those things are all still here, except now we’re down one Ke$ha verse where she gives us a bratty “booty paahp” and more vagina talk (coded as “kitty kat”). It’s been replaced by a giant, awkward pause from the fun when will.i.am verse comes in. It is impossible to describe how bad he is; all I can say is that there are un-fun boob jokes and there is actually part where he just goo-goo-gah-gahs like a child. What a shame the original wasn’t released as the single.
[6]

Ian Mathers: I mean, there are obviously ways, musically and not, that Ke$ha is admirable, and her songs are often quite good, but she can’t elevate will.i.am (no matter how hard the production tries), she can’t quite make whispering “we are the crazy ones” in a song at least partly about partying any less dodgy, and she can’t make this one feel much less distinctive than her great songs.
[5]

Sabina Tang: Ke$ha has the intonation and the laugh of a high school cool girl; not a bully so much as someone whose gaze would have raked me with contemptuous mild amusement in the locker room. Such girls will always be a different species. Find a specimen who’s in school now: no matter how old you are and how much you’ve changed, she’ll look at you and see that you weren’t a cool girl then, and fail to respect you accordingly. That frisson of… native enmity?… is what makes me pay attention to Ke$ha; even in moments like this one, when her surroundings vie to render her anonymous.
[5]

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LAURYN HILL - NEUROTIC SOCIETY
[5.75]

Tax Factor.

Anthony Easton: It takes brass ovaries to not pay your taxes for years, and then go to Sony and ask them for millions of dollars for a five song EP, and then on the first track of that EP become disgusted with global capitalism. The song is a bit ragged, it’s been run out to the market fast, and her delivery, with its manic edge, marks a kind of awareness of the aesthetics of speed; it’s double tracked and one of those tracks is played at chipmunk speed. The lyrics are so dense that some of them say really interesting things, really important things — thinking of the global capital market like Mac Heath is a fantastic idea, as is the idea of coke as the prime drug of our economic core (but that was done better by Brett Eason Ellis), as is the idea of capital as cancer (which was done better by Sontag in Illness as Metaphor),and calling out hip-hop culture, reminding her community that their love of Louis Vuitton has any number of real problems, including that it perpetuates a kind of slavery. It seems to be such a vital piece in the culture right now, so symbolic, that to treat it as a song seems difficult.
[5]

Daniel Montesinos-Donaghy: Last week, Lauryn Hill posted an iTunes link to her first new material since 2010. On her Tumblr, however, she referred to it as a “piece” — denoting that it was more than just a mere song, but art by a real artist, rushed out as a “Compulsory Mix” due to a combination of legal and label concerns. The next day, she was sentenced to three months in prison. The release of “Neurotic Society” is burdened with bitterness, seeing as Hill created it in a failed effort to pay off a large amount of money to the federal government. You want to like it, if not because Hill’s been absent from music for so long, then because of the surrounding circumstances. “Neurotic Society” is fascinating, but it’s still something of a rush job, a few drafts away from completion. The Imperial March strings would have been the first thing to go — way too unsubtle — but you wonder if Hill would consider rerecording her vocals. Hearing her rap again is almost worth hearing her recite Adbuster editorials in double-time monotone. Almost. But you imagine her word-tumbling flurry on the world’s many follies would surely stay as is, despite being an early draft. That’s the type of stubbornness that makes her a real artist, and that’s the type of stubbornness that makes her an artistic liability.
[6]

Iain Mew: I’m a long way from digesting much of what Lauryn Hill is saying, or even being sure how possible that will be, but I love how “Neurotic Society” sounds. The swirl of melody around her and the distorted voices are like she’s kicking up a tornado on her own through her force of belief and speed of her words.
[8]

Alfred Soto: A quick listen to “Lost Ones” reminded me of what we’ve missed since her withdrawal from public life. Reciting polysyllabic Latinates over a nominal backbeat may have the same effect on other listeners. Like a Beltway hack touring the Sunday talk show circuit, she hopes the fog of words will both adduce her intelligence and hide her vacuity, which is why a charge of tax evasion is so appropriate.
[2]

Ian Mathers: The gnashing production is at its most beautiful during the verse breaks, but it’s great throughout; a seething, forceful backdrop for Hill to emerge again against, on as much of her own terms as possible. The idea that her (mostly inarguable) criticisms of modern western society are somehow rude, more problematic than the problems themselves, or grounds for mental health concerns would be ridiculous if it wasn’t so chilling. That makes the track worthy of respect; it’s the production and Hill’s firebreathing performance that makes it great as well.
[8]

Brad Shoup: Ms. Hill reminds me of Doc Corbin Dart, another musician too moral to function within the day-to-day bullshit. Some people are just wired Manichaean, and for every awesome moment, there are a thousand little exhaustions. Rohan Marley has said that she writes at all times and on all surfaces; “Neurotic Society” could well be all that writing in one four-minute shot. Everyone’s indicted in this thesaurus of charges. On her biggest hit, she took a second to assure us that “Lauryn is only human.” Now, she takes on an alien pitch, as if she’s on the spaceship, pronouncing our misdeeds before she blows the planet away. The high-stepping chorus carries the seeds of excitement, even as the cymbals distort and the vocals must be scooped out. Weirdly, there’s no thrill in Ms. Hill’s gymnastics: it’s so much slam poetry read off a well-worried notepad. Still, she has my sympathies, but I know how much that’s worth.
[5]

Edward Okulicz: Hill has so much to say that it’s a shame she’s been nearly absent from record. “Neurotic Society” goes some (in fact, a lot more than some) way of catching us up on her thoughts. It’s tempting to slow the track down or read along with lyrics, but that would kill some of the shock; a line like “pot calling the kettle narcissist” sounds more profound out of Hill’s mouth than it looks on a screen. The way this is put together makes it sound like she’s got fifty lines pithier and cleverer. Ultimately she doesn’t, and is in need of a better internal editor. The verses land lots of blows (some good, some not so good) but those strings are ham-fisted.
[6]

Jonathan Bogart: The urgent, cluttered production apparently matches what’s going on in her head, if the fevered, Last Poets-style word-spew she’s delivering is any indication. She’s not wrong about any of it, and she’s perfectly within her rights to dress her ideas in the clothes of her choosing; but listeners have rights too.
[6]

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CHRIS MALINCHAK - SO GOOD TO ME
[7.18]

On some theoretical music map somewhere, this is marked as descended from “Levels.”

Daniel Montesinos-Donaghy: Li Shang-Yin once wrote that “one inch of love is an inch of ashes.” Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell had both of their lives taken away at astonishingly young ages under tragic circumstances — he at forty-four shot by his own father, she of a brain tumour at twenty-four. The music they recorded, both together and apart, became an intrinsic thread in the DNA of modern sound and a testament to the power of soul. The only track on the duo’s 1967 United album to be composed solely by Gaye was “If This World Were Mine”, a testimony to the vigor ordained from love and the desire to give back. “You’re my consolation,” Gaye sings to Terrell, intrinsically linking earthly pleasures to the unknown and the infinite. Chris Malinchak samples this lyrical turn on “So Good To Me” — along with much of “If This World Were Mine” — and sets it to a deep house instrumental that is by turns organic-sounding and gentle, shimmering where others would stomp. The romantic vibe is supported by Malinchak’s decision to retain the heart of the source material, especially given that he could have disembodied the voices of Gaye and Terrell and moved their romantic intentions elsewhere. This way, “So Good To Me” becomes an audio tribute, beaming in the romantic gestures of the past and giving them new life. An inch of ashes becomes, once again, an inch of love; somewhere in the cosmos, amongst the consolations, the lover’s wail propagates, reborn anew.
[9]

Katherine St Asaph: If Flo Rida were trendy, and also mute.
[5]

Will Adams: It’s pretty, and I can see the muted euphoria it’s angling for, but it doesn’t quite hit it for me. It’s probably the fault of that vocal drone, which just buzzes around like a mosquito that won’t leave.
[5]

Alfred Soto: Gorgeous minimalism, with the vocals projecting that halff-remembered pre-dawn glow of love.
[7]

Patrick St. Michel: This is so sweet and subdued, I want to sit in a hammock with it.
[7]

Ian Mathers: The production is such a lovely, low-key, unassuming little thing; you’d think it would wilt under or neuter the vocals. Instead this feels a bit like early Burial having a very good day out in the country, so good he’s decided to allow the samples to breathe a little.
[8]

Cecily Nowell-Smith: Lightweight, low-key house: a bit too early in the year. The whole thing’s warmed through with the nostalgia of late summer. You can hear it in the long sustained choral coo, the paddy synth chords, the echo-treated guitar sound that bursts deliberately behind the vocal like time-stretched footage of a firework. You can hear it in the vocal, too. Though it’s sewn together from Tammy and Marvin’s “If This World Were Mine” it’s a different cut of cloth, a lonely single voice that warbles at the seams. Above all, you can hear in it the ghosts of all those dance tracks that travel back with us from festivals and summer holidays. It’s sweet, corny, like Roger Sanchez’ “Another Chance,” like Bob Sinclar’s “Love Generation.” Not a good-time banger, but the sound of sunrise, taking a breath, and deciding you could dance for a few hours more.
[8]

Edward Okulicz: When you’re trying to dance but it’s 3am and knees and feet are sore and you can’t do anything more than nod while having a drink to the side, a song like this could make the dance floor seem like a cosy bed. Peacefulness and sweetness are underrated qualities in dance music.
[8]

Anthony Easton: I’ve rarely heard anything that sounds so lovely and so settled — the desire seeking that fits into the desire sought, and the expansion of that, is not a new idea but it is a rare one, and rarer when done well.
[8]

Scott Mildenhall: The greatest thing about this is how when it’s played on the radio it can just float in and out between songs, a two-and-a-half minute interlude that ends on the same level it’s maintained throughout. There’s no big finish or reconsideration, it doesn’t stop being lovely: it just stops. And then the mercifully even shorter “Paddington Frisk” by Enter Shikari comes on, as happened on Radio 1 the other week.
[8]

Brad Shoup: I was in Houston on Saturday evening with some friends, watching Yu Darvish and his Rangers squeak out a win against the ‘stros. Phillip Humber got hammered in the 6th; we watched his ERA, displayed in real time on the scoreboard, climb from an already-ghastly 8.49 to over 9-and-a-half. Mother’s Day was Sunday, and his presence reminded me of Dallas Braden, who pitched a perfect game on Mother’s Day 2010. Humber’s perfect game was only last year, and after Saturday’s bloodbath, Houston designated him for assignment. Sports prepped me for pop: scanning Total Baseball for unlikely league leaders; reading Bill James’ Abstracts and old SABR issues for tales of guys who had their afternoon, month or season in the sun; making cases for underheralded players. So pop made sense in this way: you recognize the greats, and savor those who attain greatness for any length of time. There are songs and albums; there are also people and stories. When I signed up at Rateyourmusic.com, I chose “Silent Mike” as my username in tribute to a solid Giants right fielder from 120 years ago. Malinchak spends this week lodged at number 2 on the UK chart, underneath Daft Punk. I can’t imagine he’ll be here again, but it’s still a wondrous thing. His moment consists of Disneyfied deep house, an androgynizing of Marvin Gaye streaked with grating coos, stitched together. It’s not All-Star material, but it’s humane and soothing, and just as with Mr. Humber, I wouldn’t complain if Malinchak earned another chance to impress.
[6]

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THE WANTED - WALKS LIKE RIHANNA
[2.82]

Only one syllable away from being a Weird Al Bangles parody.

Katherine St Asaph: I hate to encourage industry bullshit, but just this once: Rihanna better be getting a huuuuge kickback.
[1]

Alfred Soto: Wow. She’s freaky, can’t sing or dance, the subject of a tune sung by five young male assholes. Could be worse — it’s not “Forgives Like Rihanna.”
[0]

Scott Mildenhall: Yes, this is The Wanted’s idea of sensitivity. Very confusing though — are vocal and rug-cutting talents normally a prerequisite for being the lucky object (that’s object) of their affections? Certainly neither were prerequisites for getting into The Wanted (and who wouldn’t want to get into The Wanted, right lads?). Maybe it’s just a sly dig at Rihanna herself; after all, she’s probably the only female popstar they haven’t already picked a public figh(THAT’S QUITE ENOUGH OF THAT — AD HOMINEM ED). Nonetheless, “Walks Like Rihanna” is a melodic triumph, packed with hooks in a refreshingly clean Dr. Luke production that’s sweet without being saccharine. The “hearts go boom boom” bit in particular is actually kind of lovely, so well done all involved.
[7]

Anthony Easton: The problem is that Rihanna can sing and dance, and there’s nothing really special about her walking style. What makes your heart go boom boom with regards to Rihanna is her really quite clever dancing and singing — that its insouciant style is unique. This is a style that precludes walking just for the sake of walking. Although the chorus and the handclaps are pretty fantastic, the exploiting of Rihanna’s good name seems to be a cheap indie stunt.
[2]

Daniel Montesinos-Donaghy: Maybe “Walks Like Rihanna” — a sub O-Town ode to picking up women or something — is the first sign that we stop and consider what Ms Robyn Rihanna Fenty has achieved in the space of eight years, from being just another girl singing over the Diwali riddim to leaving an irrefutable mark on the landscape of popular music. In the eyes of the here-today gone-today internet age, she’s earned her keep — it’s why she has a “Legacy” sub-section on her Wikipedia page. In the real world, she’s a never-ending fixation of the radio, press and public. She is important. There is a difference between importance and being iconic, however, and it seems as though it’s too soon to consider Rihanna a cultural icon. This makes The Wanted’s treatise on her walk (of all things) and pointed use of her name too much too soon. It isn’t helped that the only worthwhile moment is a bridge that could have been ripped from an quarter-decent emo song from 2003 (“our hearts go boom boom boom!”).
[3]

Patrick St. Michel: I realize what The Wanted are going for here, but I really like the image of a bunch of dudes falling for a woman just because she studied the “Umbrella” video and absorbed her moves. Oh yeah, this song is pretty boring.
[3]

Iain Mew: The twanging elastic bridge beats One Direction at their own game, and the tune as a whole is warmly affecting in a way that I would not have guessed a mid-tempo single by The Wanted could manage. The second verse vocals are ropey, but that’s par for the course. It’s a shame that it’s spoiled so much by lyrics that carry through on the awfulness the title concept suggests.
[4]

Ian Mathers: A perfectly serviceable chorus either held back or elevated (your choice) by a fairly out-of-nowhere conceit - “walks” doesn’t sound like a euphemism for anything else, seeing as how they specify that she can’t dance. The fact that that qualifies her as “the freakiest thing” according to these guys is a bit discomfiting, really. And the chorus only achieves about 75% liftoff, which doesn’t help.
[5]

Jer Fairall: Production-wise, this is far from charmless: the saccharine piano intro, the brief wash of strings, and the simple, chugging guitar figure that runs throughout the entire thing are all all easy on the ears. The vocals, though, are anemic enough to make one long for the polished anonymity of One Direction, and the titular lyrical conceit is among the stupidest that I’ve encountered in a long while.
[4]

Brad Shoup: I feel like all of us — Rihanna, TSJ, the text’s audience, the bit in one channel that sounds like a boys’ choir, humanity — just got negged.
[2]

Will Adams: “She’ll be the girl of your dreams if you can close your eyes.” Yeah, we get it, guys. You just discovered masturbation.
[0]

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TYGA FT. WIZ KHALIFA & MALLY MALL - MOLLY
[3.45]

#patricksegues

Patrick St. Michel: Do you like drugs? All of these guys do — and that’s pretty much all they fucking talk about.
[1]

Daniel Montesinos-Donaghy: After Tyga surprisingly lassoed a “Deep Cover” sample into one of the best hip-hop singles of the year, it seemed like he was destined to be more than a derivative Young Money benchwarmer. Yet here we are with “Molly” and hoo boy. Tyga’s voice is all flow with no grit, a blah presence on his own track. When he drops the obvious “All Gold Everything” joke (“woo!”), you’re praying when Trinidad James Bond and his pet puppy will swoop in and save the day. Next up is Wiz, whose “my bitch so bad that I’m never ever cheating” tribute to his wife is almost heartwarming — but not heartwarming enough to negate the fact he does his trademark cackle twice. If Mally Mal is a real person, “Molly” can’t find him/her, burying him/her under the sheer force of repetition: “MOLLY/MOLLY/MOLLY/MOLLY/…MOLLY”. As stupid as it is, “Molly” does make for a fascinating stitch-up of the last two years’ dominant mixtape trends: post-crunk pugilism, no-key strip club music and, yes, ecstasy. This is Frankenstein rap, ripped from the flesh of better artists and willed to life by an endless supply of Birdman money. As a testament to stupid budgets and daft decisions, it may be unparalleled for the rest of the year; as a testament to recreational drugs, it makes for a real lousy trip.
[2]

Jer Fairall: “I’m on a bad trip,” indeed: an ugly-ass bit of club noise becomes a jittery, tingling hip-hop track, the paranoid determination of the robot voice contrasting against the heedless urgency of the verses and rendering both all the more frightening as a result.
[7]

Katherine St Asaph: If “Rack City” was grim, this is grimmer still, though less obvious. Is this during a trip, before a trip, after a trip, somehow removed from a trip? Isn’t this dead affect precisely what tripping is designed to escape? Shouldn’t you not feel the synths prick like ants up your arms or like — I swear I’m not on anything — a late sedate ABBA song? Is that a Chief Keef reference? “All Gold Everything” too? Do people still tolerate Wiz Khalifa because of some rap game golden parachute? Who or where is Mally Mall, I can’t seem to find her? (Why aren’t either substantially more or fewer kids being named Molly nowadays?) Are we there yet? Is there any more? Who knows; who cares anymore.
[5]

Brad Shoup: It’s usually a bummer when a subcultural shibboleth loses its flavor, but sometimes it’s a blessing. Somehow, club kids cadging off each other turned into a wink instead of an eyeroll; even rappers — so good at playing acquisition — are asking for Molly instead of supplying it. Tyga’s pursuit of pleasure is backed by Dez Dynamic’s late-night murder mystery theme. Khalifa gets a smile for “bitch so bad that I’m never ever cheatin’”, but no one’s escaping that voice. The trip is bad, the trip is solo. This is not headspace you’d care to explore.
[4]

Josh Langhoff: Thank goodness for young Khalifa! Tyga’s technically accomplished and all, but it must suck to have less personality than your Siri robo-hook. On the other hand, Tyga’s Siri robo-hook is even more annoying than those people who spend 20 minutes asking Siri silly questions about love and woodchucks while Siri craftily transmits their whereabouts to Homeland Security — that’s that shit I don’t need. Why am I still listening to this?
[4]

Anthony Easton: I would really like to have a track sung by a woman who is being recorded and not another status prop like champagne or drugs. This is especially the case since it’s ambiguous exactly who is going to be the consumer of the drugged beverage. Minus a point for the sample.
[1]

Iain Mew: This would be a better song without the vocal sample. Not a great one, but it has some decent dynamics; nothing anyone says even approaches the brainless dead weight of “I can’t seem to find Molly”. Plus, it doesn’t sound elsewhere like they’re having any trouble on that front.
[4]

Will Adams: It’s a weak hook, and it’s not entirely effective to use a robot voice to liven up an already-woozy strip club groove.
[3]

Cecily Nowell-Smith: We stopped going to that club in the end, and there were a lot of reasons for it — queues, crowding, the cost of entry, the cost of drinks, the cost of water, shirty bouncers, uneven lineups, unwanted hands in places that weren’t accidental with a frequency that was frankly insulting, all those things that turn a night from collective joy to an endurance test. But I guess what killed that place for me was one night, just as the feeling was starting to sour, just as the music was no longer enough, when every clumsy sweaty body that stumbled into us seemed to be asking the same hopeless, anhedonic question: you got any pills mate? got any pills? got any pills? got any pills? got any pills? got any pills?
[4]

Scott Mildenhall: Molly? She’s over there. Left a little. Right a little. Yeah, right there.
[3]

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LAURA MARLING - MASTER HUNTER
[6.88]

#hashtaggingalauramarlingsongfeelswrongbutohgodforgivemeyolo

Katherine St Asaph: What the hell happened to Laura Marling last year? Not technically — she was proficient when you were puking up high-school wine slurpees, and every lead single stuns me anew with just how good she is — but personally, as she’s now gone from staying up doing sleepless, selfless psychic battle for glum boyfriends to writing “Left Alone”: the fuck-off folk version. Saddling Marling’s latest with Idler Wheel comparisons is about as crap a move as saddling her other albums with Dylan comparisons was, and closing oneself off from men and all is far from an uncommon theme for women writers, but everything corresponds: the antsy clatterclang percussion; her runaway intonation, as in “I’ve got a littlelalot on my plate” (especially “plate”); lines like “I don’t [cry when I’m sad/stare at water] anymore.” Marling’s a different sort of singer, reaching for revival cadences (example: “no, no, no-o-o) where Apple reaches for vaudeville. She’s a different sort of songwriter, too — adding the earth to metaphors like “I cured my skin,” kind of a city/country mouse contrast; preferring Latin mythology to Apple’s Latinate words. Marling’s got her own mythology by now, too, and the verse where she alludes to “Alas I Cannot Swim” breaks your heart if you’ve followed her from the start, before she became hard to know. (If that’s meta, it’s sadder still.)
[8]

Brad Shoup: Puzzling that a track this blood-swollen dips into a bit of slutshaming. I suppose you can’t inhabit someone’s skin without it grafting a little. That’s how we get a typical serrated Marling track that keeps dipping into the cadences of “Tangled Up in Blue.” Per the Dancing Did, the rhythm section sticks together. I’m hopeful Marling puts it to more frightful use soon enough.
[6]

Jer Fairall: Laura Marling understands swagger far better than any current folkie. While her ex Marcus Mumford equates rock ‘n’ roll with stadium-ready histrionics, Marling’s songs have a primal urgency that feels — oh, I’ll just go ahead and say it — far more real than those of her guitar-strumming peers. “Master Hunter” has a fierce momentum similar to the bounding, inexorable “Rambling Man” and the slow-building climax of the majestic “Sophia,” possibly her two best songs to date. If this one admittedly falls a bit shy of that high standard, perhaps it lurches a bit too quickly out of the gate, Marling failing to allow herself the space to work the song up into the fury that makes their payoffs so reliably cathartic. Still, she manages to drop an F-bomb with such casual scorn that it registers as genuinely shocking the first few times through, and the nod to Dylan is inserted into the flow of the narrative with such ease and confidence that it feels completely earned.
[7]

Anthony Easton: It quotes Dylan not only in the lyrics, but in the slightly off edge of the singing and the loping guitars: quoting Dylan like he quoted Henry Timrod, as a winking abstraction and an as act of control of tradition and text. It is something that folk music is supposed to do, but rarely does.
[9]

Alfred Soto: The props are in their places: the acoustic riff bounces off the rubberband bass line, Dylan allusion for the nerds in the audience. But I don’t hear a single ear-catching inflection in Marling’s voice.
[4]

Daniel Montesinos-Donaghy: “I. Am. A. Master. Hunter.” Marling relishes saying this as much as possible, emphasising the hierarchical power behind “master” and the undulating threat of “hunter”. At the close of the song, she relishes “HUNT,” spitting it out with such a relish that I did a double-take, utterly convinced that she was swearing. “Hunter” doesn’t shy away enough from its influences to act as an artistic revelation — the word-tumble angst is all Fiona, the guitar stance is all Patti -– but its clenched-fist power is certainly an interesting direction.
[7]

Jonathan Bogart: There’s blood and sinew here that I don’t remember hearing from her before, though I’d doubt my memory before hers. I like the fierceness of the attack maybe all the more for the fact that it’s unarmed, so to speak.
[7]

Edward Okulicz: On its own merits, it’s a perfectly good blues song, it’s just that it’s only halfway up a very long ladder Marling’s climbed before.
[7]

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MARIAH CAREY FT. MIGUEL - #BEAUTIFUL
[8.00]

#onlyyoucanpreventhashtagfires

Daniel Montesinos-Donaghy: So. The #hashtag. The stupid marketing attempt of the title betrays the song it supports — you expect something plugged into the mainframe and struggling to keep up with trends. Instead, “Beautiful” is warm and casual and quite timeless-sounding. The sampled drumbreak and Turtles-esque guitar lines (with amp fuzz!) help, but the lovers’ gaze lends the song an ageless appeal. Miguel made drugs and hugs as sweet as each other on “Do You,” but he’s on his best behaviour here, asking Mariah to jump on the back of his bike, trying on matinee idol poses with doe-eyed sincerity. (The dropped curses in the chorus hint to a bout of F-bombs that threaten to unsettle the tone. Let’s hope the clean version is the final album version.) His host sounds great, obviously, but her indisputable vocal control makes the moments that she doesn’t sing just as important. Case in point: her easy “I’m charmed” chuckle in response to her lovelorn partner is theatre, but it feels genuine. At the song’s climax, their aw-shucks laughing outweighs the swirling melodies and time-honoured Mimi High Notes™. You’ll come back for the melodies but yearn for the joy in the play-acting.
[8]

Brad Shoup: They wrote a Springsteen track?! This is a true duet, the singers merging territories. Miguel lays out for his more accomplished partner, who made her bones in this summery, moonlit mode. They’re singing over purgatory’s clattering jukebox, which not even Bruce was bold enough to try as a trick.
[8]

Anthony Easton: The guitar and tambourine on this are is pure minimalism, as are the opening lines about the back of the bike. The percussion is smart enough, and the handclaps hint at a Spectorian way. The way Mariah sings the odd details — the syllable and sigh and quasi-orgasm, how she stretches “beautiful” beyond reason or talks about red lights — just opens like a lily at noon. It’s a masterpiece of construction.
[8]

Edward Okulicz: The groove is retro-dreamy and loose-limbed, but the pleasure is brief; there’s not enough Mariah on this. When her verse throws in a brief trill reminiscent of her ’90s peak (because she had several peaks), it’s magic, though sweet as this is, the song’s no “Dream Lover.” Fine as Miguel is, and cruisy as the song is, it needs more of the kind of ecstacy only Mariah’s voice could give it.
[6]

Rebecca A. Gowns: Mariah doesn’t sound like she used to. Not only are her vocal abilities physically impaired, but there are a thousand more production tricks to fill out a voice these days, so she almost sounds like a different person. That being said, it’s not jarring. I like the way that this song combines old and new. It’s got a lot of older pop threads in it, braided with indie pop tropes like the lazy guitar and shuffling beat and handclaps. It evokes pop ballads of the past, but every beat affirms that it belongs on the radio for summer 2013.
[8]

Alfred Soto: She sounds good, less raspy than has been her wont, a reminder that on tracks like Brenda K Starr’s “I Still Believe” her harmonies illuminated without making the star squint. Here she functions as a projector of ebullience: the stifled chuckles and indulging herself with the briefest of melismatic runs. But let’s be clear: this is a “Miguel ft. Mariah Carey” performance, and the new star grinds against post-Stax guitar grit and flippy floppy percussion as if this was his eight or ninth consecutive top ten pop hit. I like to think he and Carey fought over the hashtag.
[8]

Katherine St Asaph: Mariah Carey and Miguel have made the retcon of the summer. A lot of otherwise smart people are acting like either’s presence on a song is automatically golden, which, like — did “Triumphant (Get ‘Em)” just never happen? Or “Lotus Flower Bomb”? Whatever they did, it’s marketing so deft they never even needed the hashtag. (Which doesn’t even work as a hashtag.) But then, I can’t exactly be objective either; songs where beautiful people sing and laugh about how they’ve chosen other beautiful people always strike me as smug at best and, at worst, cruel. (The line “I can’t pretend it [i.e. looks] don’t mean a thing” doesn’t help; it’s less reminiscent of pillow talk than how guys justify dumping their starter girlfriends.) The guitar and shambolic drums code less R&B than rock, which is worrisome: maybe Miguel took it a little too much to heart when people praised the Zombies bit on Kaleidoscope Dream, or maybe the producers were going for an reupholstered “Hey Porsche” sound — or, for that matter, Ryan Tedder. But damn it, I can’t pretend Mariah’s whistle register isn’t her trump card. Well played.
[7]

Patrick St. Michel: The real surprise here is the backing music, which conceals a surprising amount of sadness for something a lot of people are rushing to call the summer jam of 2013. The guitar, beat and synth glisten across this song, but also sound really reserved for something designed to soundtrack the warmest season. It makes the song more intimate, but it also casts a bit of shade on the proceedings, as if both parties here know this can’t really last — like summer itself — so they need to fit all the beautiful stuff in while they can. Maybe it’s just the line about liking how he runs red lights. Regardless, the fact this isn’t a straight-up jam makes it all the better.
[9]

Jer Fairall: Mariah clearly gets that this is her duet partner’s moment and wisely lets her latest comeback bid play to his strengths. Best of all, his presence seems to have goaded her into a more restrained performance; her vocal here is easy and playful, resisting any show-off moments in an uncharacteristic acknowledgement that the needs of the song actually do, or at least should, come first. Can a whole Marvin and Tammi-style duet album be next?
[7]

Jonathan Bogart: The production rattles and hums with loose Spectorisms (it has that in common with the Dum Dum Girls), but it’s the two principals, flirting and goofing off instead of intoning with appropriate Lynchian solemnity, who ease the retro atmospherics into the bright light of Now. It’s got a little dust on it, but so does pretty much everything I love.
[9]

Will Adams: What else to say about something that brings a smile to my face so quickly? My favorite part is in the second half of Miguel’s verse, when those smeared guitars join in. It’s the sound of every golden sunset I’ve seen collapsed into one moment. “Beautiful” knows it’s timeless, so it fakes you out with the “My Girl” intro then plays you out with an outro of ad-libbing from a pair so perfect I could listen to them la-dee-da for days. Summer is here.
[10]

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KID CUDI FT. TOO $HORT - GIRLS
[3.25] 

I can’t tell which is earworming more, Santigold’s “Girls” or Britney’s “Boys”…

Daniel Montesinos-Donaghy: “Hmmm,” goes Kid Cudi. We’ve caught him in the middle of his verse, trailing his train of thought. He wakes up, completing his stray thought: “I want them/I need them”. He’s talking about girls. This slump between thoughtfulness and blunt horniness is Cudi’s career in a nutshell: pretentions of sophistication bumping heads with dunder-headed directness. Even at its hookiest, like on “Girls”, his music is unaware of its brusqueness. He lacks the means to express himself as adroitly as he imagines, which leads him to attempt K-Ci style wails of “let me see that bodayyy!” without stopping to consider how absurd it seems. He gives the K-Ci wail his all, though, following the idea through to its natural conclusion. Too $hort, who understands quite how preposterous his pimp persona can be, is in firm control here, dropping time-honoured sleaze bars like nothing changed since “Blow the Whistle”. His cameo reminds me of an anecdote he shared on a recent episode of The Champs about taking his friend Mike to a party wearing pimp curls and a suit. Mike, out of his element and in clothes completely unlike him, was unsure how to talk to any women. $hort Dogg advises him to fully commit to how absurd he looks: “Walk up to every girl that you like and just say ‘What up, my name is Mike, bitch’.” His essence on “Girls” is very much the same as with poor Mike — he mentors Cudi in a devotion to potentially foolish behaviour. 
[7]

Jer Fairall: Backing up Cudi’s stoned drawl, the ominous accompaniment has the effect of making the chorus hook sound like the mantra of a serial killer, something that the tiresome, yet no less appalling, misogyny of Too $hort’s verse only helps literalize.
[2]

Crystal Xia: Kid Cudi’s attempt at a “girls of all different kinds are beautiful” type song ends up being a racial fetish anthem. The worst part is probably Too $hort’s verse where he starts with “open up those exotic thighs” and makes it worse by rattling off all the different races and how he wants to have sex with all of them and then leave them because he is just that sexually competent. Shockingly, it comes off as gross instead of flattering. The production matches this level of creepiness, with some sort of weird grinding noise in the background, foreboding synths, and some male voice intermittently saying “right, alright” in the same cadence that shady dudes licking their lips and lurking in corners of bars do. Thanks, Cudi! 
[1]

Patrick St. Michel: I love when a song features a guest verse so bad that it overshadows everything else going on in the track with its rankness. Makes writing so much easier!
[1]

Brad Shoup: From the What a Difference, etc. File… Too $hort’s assurances of pan-racial fuckery now makes me think of Mad Men’s Pete Campbell sputtering about his father-in-law cavorting with “the biggest, blackest prostitute you’ve ever seen!” Sad to say, Too $hort’s appearance is the hip-hop equivalent of a Mike Bolton guest spot, which… ahem. As for Cudi, he seems to be embracing a process-based pop approach, which leaves us to tap our fingers while he tries to solve a melody maze. That he ends up like Tunde Adebimpe on the bridge seems to validate his method somewhat. For keeping the busted-transmission rhythm of the source material, I’m adding a point.
[5]

Anthony Easton: It just had to end with “bitch.” It’s too bad because Cudi has one of the best voices in hip-hop right now. 
[5]

Katherine St Asaph: What would it take for me to get this song? Smoke a lot more weed? Be a lot prettier, so any of this shit would apply to me? Smoke even more weed? Blowtorch my ears until the concepts of “on key” and “musical coherence” are just so much charred cartilage? Only the weed seems doable, and I’m not sure there’s enough in existence.
[1]

Alfred Soto: $hort’s bit ranks with the rankest of contemporary bitch baiting, but let’s not kid ourselves: Cudi’s timbre can’t save his bit either. 
[4]

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