It’s Spiderman: Brand New Day… day!
[Video]
[5.75]
[4]
Tom Feckerdt: The two-note keyboard arrangement that first shows up midway through this song’s first breakdown is such an incidental rip-off of Depeche Mode’s “Wrong” it’s not even funny. With that out of the way, I feel the need to pay my respects to Steve Lacy as a gifted arranger and exquisite guitar player, while also acknowledging that he’s often a poor songwriter. Listening to this and the other singles from Oh Yeah?, it feels like he took all the wrong lessons from the success of “Bad Habit” and decided he had to be even more upfront and obvious with his melodies, replacing “I wish I knew” with an all-encompassing “C’mon, c’mon, c’mon.” Melody, of course, is always welcome, but Lacy’s mainlines are often too meandering and sung with a brittle, laissez-faire attitude so that they never stick the landing. A shame, because he makes the most out of the base composition in the last 25 seconds by merely humming a tune and playing the chords with a really sturdy, sunset-glow keyboard texture. Shows promise, and I’ll concede the song might hit harder as a lazy hands-in-the-air closer at 7PM on a music festival, but it just didn’t come off in the studio. Many such cases.
[5]
Nortey Dowuona: Matthew Castellanos as a cowriter has imbibed the pop truism of punchy, direct and terse. The smooth, direct croons of Tanerelle, the languid guitar driven stroll of benee and the bright, steely shimmer of Lykke Li all wrap up quick before the three minute mark. Whereas the post-Frank/Twigs/SZA simmer and boil of Khamari is given time to come to a head of steam then smooth out, allowed the time to stretch, piecing together bits near the end such as “it’s the way you give someone a real embrace, that puts me in my place, my place.” And with “Oh Yeah?”, Castellanos combines those approaches. It’s done before three, takes its sweet time simmering in its languid stew, stirred in a warming steel bowl on a stroll before being poured gently into each of our plastic bowls. A single verse laid out as “life’s a bitch, and then you live again.” Really, Castellanos is about paring, smoothing, honing, removing. Which is why that verse drifts by me but I remember that “C’mon, c’mon, c’mooooon!” Sometimes simpler really is better.
[9]
Jel Bugle: Not a lot to say about this, I liked the first few seconds — after that it was a bit droney and sounded like “Do You Realize??”
[4]
Tim de Reuse: Other than a fuzzy edge to the electronics and a charming strain in Lacy’s voice, it’s a four-chord vibe-piece that seems to beg you to only half-listen to it. Makes sense to put this at the end of a movie, but makes less sense to release it as a single.
[4]
Charlotte Gaze: Pretty functional album opener. Pretty mediocre overplayed hit. About time the overwhelming popularity of “Space Song” was reflected in a mainstream pop facsimile, though.
[5]
David Allun Jones: So much of what makes Steve Lacy and his output endearing is how his creations feel like unfinished, fumbled-through ideas (oft-hinting of a Prince genius-in-the-making) that end up prematurely leaking as-is and made into official product because, well, it’s out there anyway. That a few of these multi-genre-seasoned curios manage to somehow make their way into becoming actual chart hits only add to his root-worthiness. The pensive, Spider-Man-boosted “Oh Yeah?” lands at just under three minutes, with most of that runtime anchored in repeats of “Come on”, “ooh” and “oh”, but damn if they, and nearly every line of its one lone verse (but really, bridge), don’t hit like a series of anthemic hooks that could fuel several pop smashes on their own. “Life’s a bitch/ And then you live again” is all shades of *chef’s kiss*. His somber, drawn out wail of “we’re too young to die” is heart-piercing in all the varying meanings it could carry. That arena-storming climax is cinematic headphone heaven.
[9]
Ian Mathers: After a bunch of listen, my mind still refuses to draw a bead on this one as a “song.” All that sticks is the hazed-out “c’mon c’mon c’mon” sections, perfect for a suitably elegiac/random/both tik tok clip compilation. Functional, pleasant, but not much more than that.
[6]