HAWSE!
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[7.17]
Brad Shoup: We start with bass recombining and churning like waves breaching the organ’s seawall. Then descends John Newman’s neo-soul honk, practically ripping stitches as he turns that phrase over and over. It signifies as church, but I’m negotiating it down to a summoning. So much here I’m a fool for! Those men chanting “you know I said it’s true/you know I can feel it too” like a party hop at a wedding reception, for one. The English Riviera trumpet solo foreshadowing the diseased riff, which entwines with the Jamersonian bass, lately roused from the bridge as a tamed entity. The brilliant syncopation in the final quarter, providing a whole new vector, a fizzy comedown. That melody, which taps a personal vein and begs all the tweaks and harmonies that Rudimental and Newman didn’t themselves provide. Fourteen words to lay me flat. Supremely done.
[10]
Anthony Easton: The recursive moment that breaks into some solid brass at about 2:46 makes up for the boredom that bedrocks the rest of the track.
[5]
Alfred Soto: This comes down to the organ ripples and brass arrangement, more powerful and lovebuzzed than Newman’s vocal.
[6]
Jonathan Bogart: I was getting ready to write something snidely dismissive of bog-standard UK dance-pop, and then the trumpet solo hit, and my world crumbled. Then the song moved into a stumbling swing rhythm, and I had to stop myself from crying in a coffee shop.
[7]
Iain Mew: Makes me wonder anew at how Alex Clare can be in the top 10. That he’s still there in the week this has hit #1 suggests that there may be people still buying “Too Close” despite having heard “Feel the Love,” and if so I am baffled. I still don’t think dubstep soul is that fantastic an idea, but the extent to which this packs a heavier emotional punch whilst being musically lighter on its feet makes the head to head look embarrassing. Also, I will never say no to a trumpet solo in a pop song.
[7]
Katherine St Asaph: The precise track will.i.am dumbed down for his single, though worryingly close to a drum-and-bass deconstruction of that Elton John song with a Calvin Harris vocal. I don’t quite feel love yet, but I’m feeling something; perhaps we need a little more time on the floor.
[8]