Cafuné ft. Riovaz – Temporary Lover

And we’re back stateside for some indie pop courtesy of Katherine…

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[7.00]Katherine St. Asaph: Crushes require fuel, so much fuel, blazing through your reserves faster than you can ever replenish. And false hope is a readily available fuel: tainted by exposure to the outside world, corrosive and you know it; but more potent than the real thing, and maybe the only fuel you’ve got. Songs are impervious to corrosion, though, and nothing fuels a pop song like false hope. That’s what makes “Temporary Lover” — even the title has futility baked in — work better than it perhaps should. It sounds like a 2000s video games soundtrack and feels like all those early ’10s dance crossovers that were nominally powered by bro-ness but actually powered by uncontainable emotion. The intro is short, a two-note loop impatient to get to the hook the way one might be impatient to get to a future rendezvous. (And a specific time in the future, too; “November” functions the same way in the lyrics that “2019” did in Raye’s “Escapism,” an inlet for any time-bound yearning or regret a listener might have.) The vocals are effortfully pianissimo, trailing off lines, straining not to emote. “I hope you’ll handle things differently” is a measured “are you in the right headspace?” type of lyric, the kind of thing you would text in this situation after triple-checking (or I guess realistically these days getting Claude to do it if you must, which you mustn’t). The percussion expresses what her voice barely conceals: frantic, sputtering, an engine idling. Then comes “guess I’ll just hold this in for now,” and the engine accelerates from 0 to 100 then stays at top speed. The hook is huge — this probably won’t show up in karaoke books, but I desperately want it to — and the vocals are just short of slipping into Nessa Barrett-style TikTok pop-punk (a compliment, here). Riovaz plays her inevitably less invested counterpart: emotionally blunted rather than emotionally frantic, or at least that’s what he thinks. When choosing a song for this year, I had a shortlist of tasteful tracks, hooky tracks, Jukebox-bait tracks, tracks with discourse, tracks about which everyone here would undoubtedly have a lot to say; I went with the one I know I’d have had on repeat. (Uh, however, necessary disclaimer on that: I heard this from a promo in my still-overflowing inbox and only found out later, as in like three days ago, that it was a former Pitchfork writer — which is probably how it got in my inbox in the first place. Any nepo is purely coincidental.)
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Jel Bugle: A lament from the machine. I liked the clangy clashy percussion sounds.
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Claire Davidson: The opening of “Temporary Lover” is really quite striking: Sedona Schat’s airy delivery floats across a crystalline keyboard melody that clashes potently with an undercurrent of muffled noise that becomes powerfully propulsive in its staticky discord. That foundation gives way to a galvanizing chorus, too, as the first verse’s more contained anxiety bursts into a blend of sandy but energetic percussion and distant melodic chimes, the combination of which allows Schat to plead for a partner with a more potent angst, the reverb surrounding her creating a tension that readily replicates the feeling of begging with someone who’s impossibly distant, Still, Schat’s choice to not belt more heavily on this chorus does rob “Temporary Lover” of some of its urgency, not helped by her more diminished place in the mix. What really slows the song’s momentum, though, is the presence of Riovaz on the second verse: his more subdued crooning isn’t bad, per se, but it feels borrowed from a wholly different song, so muted in its mournful goodbyes that the entire track feels disjointed as a result of its inclusion.
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Tim de Reuse: The instrumental is cluttered with exuberant little chirps and flutters that recall my most nostalgia-clouded memories of GameCube battle music — Sedona Schat weaves her way between the heavy, noisy percussion, filling up all other available space, while Noah Yoo holds back to give the third act more oomph. It’s got exactly one sonic trick — one “oh, this is nice” moment at the beginning when its candy-sheen production drops in — and, for the most part, this alone is enough to hold my interest for three minutes, even if there’s not a lot of surprises past that.
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Ian Mathers: One of the slighter “ft.”s I’ve heard in a while, and not one that particularly adds much; but the original vocal performance and production is so strong that’s not really a huge knock against the song. The first 30 seconds or so immediately puts me in the mind of the most devastatingly well-cut-together AMVs that got passed around in high school, and I do actually mean that as a compliment.
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Nortey Dowuona: It’s easy to see why producer Noah Yoo singled out this song in his review of Against All Logic’s 2017-2019. Underneath the fierce sloganeering of Lydia Lunch, Nicholas Jaar contructs a seething, rumbling banger that lays its heavy, dusty kicks doubly over the fizzing, spiting synths as well as the purring, hoarse bass. Compare this to the desperately fast breakbeats that underlie Riovaz’s Alvin & the Chipmunks tenor on “See U There,” produced by Linguini, which is lithe, fleet footed and rubbery sweet, easy on the ears yet hard to catch in the mind. Yoo strikes a solid midpoint with the heavy handed kicks of Jaar yet the speedy pace of Linguini, allowing Sedona Schat to comfortably sing over them without much strain, tender yet tart. Riovaz sounds both forthright and poignant in his appearance, with only a brief hint of percussion allowing him to settle into the warm plush chords, which Schat snaps them back out of, leaving Riovaz in the panning. Rough and heavy handed yet fleet and lively. Perfectly balanced, allowing for catharsis.
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Taylor Alatorre: I like how the “indie kids go electronic” trope is performed here with an uncomplicated earnestness, like they’re volunteers doing re-enactments at the Recession Pop Historical Society. The choice of guest vocalist, however, signals Cafuné’s desire to engage directly with the contemporary microscenes that have adopted them. It’s a worthy desire which is ill-served by the production’s more stock-sounding elements, chiefly those bloated and attention-seeking snare hits. Riovaz has a lithe and adaptable voice which deserves some open space to crawl around in; here he’s used to add emo-R&B flavoring to a four-on-the-floor placeholder beat that wasn’t lacking for moodiness to begin with.
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Dave Moore: A hazy makeshift club for one, smoke machine and strobe light in the bedroom, painfully lonely and full of life.
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Alfred Soto: Solid dance pop whose anonymous vocal and beat propulsion are just enough.
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Will Adams: It’s almost there. “Temporary Lover” reminds me a lot of earlier PVRIS (before they fell off): propulsive and brooding, with lyrics that express a sense of dread creeping into one’s bones. Here, it’s the realization that a relationship you’ve poured your whole self into has fizzled out. To its detriment, the song fizzles too at its midpoint. Riovaz’s verse fades slowly into view, the drums fall out, and the momentum is gone. Poetic in theory, frustrating to listen to in practice.
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