Norwaaaaaaaaaaaaaay…
[Video][Myspace]
[5.60]
Brad Shoup: “My friend” always strikes me as the laziest form of rhyme completion. Everything else makes sense, though: electropop contrarian stating he doesn’t want to be the billionth person to have the “look at me, I’m making it” epiphany. Outside of the flurries of 32nd notes or whatever they are, though, Donkeyboy’s sonics are the equivalent of shot glasses from the Munch Museum.
[5]
Iain Mew: Let’s start off by admitting that I actually didn’t love “Ambitions” all that much. This, though, is fantastic. Not only do they demonstrate their ability to do a dead on Pet Shop Boys impression, but they’ve made the fine choice to specifically take on “The Samurai in Autumn”! They’ve made it even more enjoyably bloopy and replaced its detached mantra with a big throbbing heart of a chorus — not something which I would have guessed it needed, but it works perfectly.
[9]
Edward Okulicz: When I saw the title, containing “boy” I thought, given how great both “Ambitions” and the song they wrote with Diana Vickers were, they need a girl in their line-up to be truly great. “City Boy” isn’t bad but as hyper-aerobicised, highly-strung and highly-sung synth-pop goes, my threshold isn’t that high. A bubbly, airy singalong, then, with not much more… an Aero bar of a track.
[6]
Alex Ostroff: Wait, so you’re telling me that Linnea Dale isn’t actually a member of this band? Why the hell not? Because while Donkeyboy still know their way around 80’s nostalgia and some decent tunes, there’s none of the ambivalence and restrained anger/passion/hope that she conveyed in ‘Ambitions‘, even if the text mines the same ground. (Also, two years too late: I was wrong. That track was easily an [8]. At least.)
[6]
John Seroff: One of the pitfalls of digesting the entirety of the vast pop churn Singles Jukebox produces is that the bad gets worse on repeat and the merely good begins to gleam unrealistically in comparison. That’s a real worry with a good, not great, song like “City Boy“. Amidst burbling zippers, subdued piano and pseudo strings, an undercoat of glamor and a neat dare-you-to-sing-along chorus, Donkeyboy conjure up a pleasant rarity: an understated club banger. I only wish it had an additional layer, a coda or a crescendo or a swell of some new melody. There’s an undeniable, undefinable lack that keeps the song from really taking flight. Still, beggars can’t be choosers.
[8]
Michaela Drapes: Well, hopefully this will have a lifespan outside of having the most amusing misheard lyric in recent memory, because it’s otherwise utterly delightful, with a toothy hook and endless dancefloor potential.
[6]
Alfred Soto: The end of Auto Tune as we know it.
[1]
Matt Cibula: Pleasant enough, I suppose. Every time I hear this I feel like I just bought a new car… but not in a good way.
[5]
Andy Hutchins: Appropriately chirpy and springy, sure, but what happened to the other guy? And are those the worst guards in any imagined dystopian fascist future ever?
[5]
Katherine St Asaph: Like watching the awkward midpoint of a metamorphosis you hadn’t noticed was happening, in which Adam Levine’s autotune loses its Turing crib notes, everyone’s blunt bloops get lossier and lossier, and pop shuffles toward Eiffel 65.
[5]