He’s come a long way since his radio-eating days…
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[6.67]
Iain Mew: My first reaction to the start of “36” was that I’d happily soak in that bass for a long time. So I can’t be too disappointed when that’s mostly all Kwes does.
[6]
Patrick St. Michel: This is the sweetest song about someone’s grandparents I’ve heard in 2013, and it has great fuzzy-duzzy production to boot.
[8]
Brad Shoup: Sad to see the piano go. Perhaps it was depicting the slowed motion of elders too literally. In its absence, “36” becomes a tone poem, full of twinkle, U2 guitar drag and lines rendered in cursive. It’s so sweet I forget it started off like “Only in Dreams” with a “Hold On, We’re Going Home” drum track.
[6]
Frank Kogan: As the bass gets ready to crush people and synth-bells suggest a party, the keybs blimp away inconsequentially and the singing resolutely refuses to get up and start its day, much less its night. I’m raising this a point or two for thoroughly baffling me.
[6]
Daniel Montesinos-Donaghy: Despite being the most immediate moment from a stubbornly idiosyncratic record, there remains something distinctly off about Kwes’s “36.” There’s unease in the ruptured layers of percussion, the bassline threatening to overpower the piano melodies, the artist’s strained vocal delivery, the sudden conclusion (like a thought interrupted in mid-flow). It’s uneasy and a little queasy-sounding. Yet Kwes has a skill in drawing the gentle and the beautiful out of oddness, and a distinct ear for knowing where to place each element. It’s a collage as much as it is a pop song, and it’s a mighty fine pop song too: smart, honest, jaw-droppingly pretty.
[9]
Alfred Soto: It sounds like the draggier bits of TV on the Radio but thanks to the warm blanket electronics and synths the melancholy is earned. I come to wish you an unhappy birthday indeed.
[5]