We like Rudimental better too…
[Video][Website]
[5.75]
Brad Shoup: In the last 25 years or so, Motown fell behind Stax in the sweepstakes. Different systems are always fighting for primacy, and the heart dusted the mind. (I believe we’re currently in an endocrine age.) Of course, Northern Soul — nutty as they were for the Rust Belt — mixed the two, finding a heady concoction in professional muscle knocking out rococo emotional works. Newman aims for that big-city declamation –the Morse-code guitar is straight out of “You Keep Me Hangin’ On” — but instead of riding a groove, he’s shouting down a house-injected floorfiller. The chorus is massive, as pained as that dumb intro piano is painful. The middle eight (four?) skips the excavation. The wub’s so flattened, we might as well call it bass again, and Newman gets to stomp right along with the band. I’m cautiously optimistic that I’ll be able to enjoy this a few times before it beaches itself on American radio.
[7]
Alfred Soto: Newman, imitating Dave Matthews, goes nasal over shuffle nonsense and Pet Shop Boys house piano. A weird track in the worst way. But…propulsion!
[4]
Scott Mildenhall: It’s been six years, and finally someone has thought to come back to Mark Ronson’s Version with house as well as horns. The result is decades-spanning drama; just as Version tried to do, and just as “Get Lucky” has done more recently, taking music from the ages, and making it for the ages. From the “You Keep Me Hangin’ On”-recalling Morse code guitar to the aforementioned house piano and the no-longer-guaranteed gloomwobble breakdown there’s something from every time and for everyone, all expertly executed and arranged into one precise package. In so many senses, this song is massive.
[9]
Anthony Easton: Boshtastic, with a veldt wide open chorus, and a full emotional meltdown, that seems more melodrama than feeling–by the books artifice, made more palatable with handclap and piano chorus, classic Elton Style.
[6]
Will Adams: The Ronson-lite production is less bracing than the Rudimental tracks John Newman has frequented. He’s still soulful as ever, but the mid-tempo bumps instead of soars.
[5]
Mallory O’Donnell: Bits of Maroon 5 ponderosity in here (the intro, the farty plodding bit around 2:32, the delivery of words like “unforgivable” and “do”) can actually be forgiven and are fairly well overshadowed by the rest of it, which is classic soulful sad uplifting British shuffle-house, with a vocal that rightly favors Roland Gift over Roland Orzabal. A good remix? Editing out the crap bits and extending the breaks? That could potentially bang.
[6]
Rebecca A. Gowns: The video for this does a pretty good homage to the Northern Soul scene — it fits the song pretty well, as the music is evoking all those sounds (disco, soul, R&B, funk, dance, ALL of those sounds). As far as an homage goes, it’s decent, but like a great deal of neo-soul music, it tends to come across as lifeless due to being made with modern compressed production. There is so much sound, and so much effort, and all of it’s flattened. And then the bridge is terrible. That tiny portion of the song does a huge disservice to it, as the thin Northern Soul veneer breaks and we’re back in the land of Imagine Dragons. The video also underlines this break at 2:51, when a man looks up to see his girl has left him and has a face like “wtf mate??”
[4]
Katherine St Asaph: I’d go anywhere for this chord progression, for cascading strings or those guitar licks sounding like artificial beeps. But the track needs anybody else singing anything else — “You Keep Me Hangin’ On,” or “Get Lucky,” or oh hey, “Hole in the Head.” I’d even take this lyric, which could resonate, by someone like Katy B rather than John Newman straining nothing.
[5]