Temper City – Self Aware

Not a cover of… uh, *quickly Googles* Qveen Herby…?

[Video]
[3.50]Will Adams: The summer of 2013 I interned at a radio promotion company that focused on alternative and AAA formats, which meant I was awash in this exact strain of indie rock that’s, well, self-aware. I’m not particularly nostalgic for it, though I appreciate that frontman Eyten Peled gives enough of a wink to show he recognizes the dual sleaziness and self-deprecation of a line like “God, you look so pretty when you tell me that you love me.” Less amusing is the music, which is so uninspired they might as well have named their outfit Imagine Twenty-One Neighbourhoods.
[4]

Alfred Soto: Another issue of the I’m-fucked-up-but-love-me-anyway lineage, “Self Aware” offers nothing of distinction but the echo and a distracting similarity to “Stressed Out.”
[3]

Andrew Karpan: The sound of cosmopolitan nothingness as a kind of value statement; the reflective anonymity of singer Eytan Peled, an Israeli-LA singer-songwriter whose personality feels crafted out of the recent imagination of Rachel Sennott, manages to somehow break new frontiers of nostalgia for the mid 2010s that I had not thought possible. It’s the taste of a lite beer I don’t even remember liking. But now that you mention it, I certainly do remember it.
[5]

Al Varela: “Self Aware” reminds me most of the late-2010s landscape of alternative/rock radio where everyone’s trying to balance the hooky melodies of Twenty One Pilots and Imagine Dragons with the moodier, drearier production of the time. That era’s been a mixed bag at best and unfortunately “Self Aware” falls into that era’s worst traits. The song is catchy, but not necessarily in a good way. It’s a good melody that’s performed in a very sterile, mildly annoying bray. The drums are a slog, giving the song a really sluggish and stiff tempo that doesn’t give you a good sense whether you’re supposed to groove or brood to it. And while I get the idea of being tortured by your own self-awareness and how it blocks you from being with someone you really care for, it’s too uninspired to really move me. In the end I’m left with a song with very little to offer me. Easily the worst of the rising rock/alternative hits this year.
[4]

Harlan Talib Ockey: What on earth are we doing here? This is “Sweater Weather” without the hook or the lyrical specificity. This is lukewarm Cage the Elephant purée. This is rhyming “in the way” with “self-aware”. Come on now.
[1]

Charli Jae Brister: Imagine Dragons must be held to account.
[1]

Nortey Dowuona: To be as self aware as these guys are, this is the exact Steve Lacy/Twenty One Pilots mixture I would happily leap up to praise without a hesitation. The verse are taut and vaguely poetic (“Mood swings like thе weather / Body’s under pressure / Oh, I love the way you’re using your imagination”), the drumming by Aviv Barinholtz and guitar by Hen Kordova are taut and limply slog along in the mix, interweaving while failing to slip into a harder groove or a warmer stroll. Eytan Peled’s singing is taut yet softly crumbly once it strains to reach for the high notes. The mixing and mastering, done by Aviv and Hen, makes the song taut yet lumpen and dull, relying on the enclosed cage of the over-ear headphones to cover for their inadequacies. All of it is so perfect for a middle class failson sap like me, but with my self aware gaze on this weak patronizing sugary chili sauce, I just replay it over and over and find the only part I earnestly find to like is the four bars of synthesizers played by Hen and Aviv. I see a good future writing songs somewhere the world is not as self aware as these putzes.
[5]

Julian Axelrod: Ah yes, that famous complaint about dating men: They’re too self aware.
[5]