Too sad for snark…
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[7.29]
Jessica Doyle: It’s 2 am, and the lights of the hotel bar are all tinted blue, and the chair is so padded you’re half afraid you might just fall asleep there, so you try not to focus on the blue reflecting off the remaining cube of ice in your glass; but you’re pretty sure the two people sitting in your line of sight, dressed too well even for a nice hotel like this, are in the midst of breaking up, so you can’t look at them, either.
[6]
Alfred Soto: John Grant, fresh after last year’s triumphant Pale Green Ghosts, brings singer-songwriter chops for those looking for scenarios and so forth on a post-house album. “I Try to Talk to You” is one of the few good songs about HIV written in recent years, and, thanks to the piano, not the least doleful despite sounding on first hearing like Beck over a Levan remix.
[8]
Brad Shoup: It’s difficult to imagine this sparking any dancing; it’s more like a crushing little film on TV during the witching hour. The tension between Grant’s affectless distress and garish elements like the piano run and the crying violin is the real meat.
[6]
Anthony Easton: This is very now, this is what the sad faggots are listening to, against the memory of other spaces; this is the sound of the net replacing actual cruising, this is the crystal palace before it burns down, this is the new oblivion, this is very sad; this is not boring enough to be interesting.
[5]
Abby Waysdorf: The 80s-underground-disco atmosphere, the earthy vocals, the David Bowie piano: it works brilliantly, although I’ve sat here for a good half-hour trying to put into words exactly why. It’s not just the references, it’s the way it all comes together, the way the vocals smoke over the subtle but insistent beat, the piano trailing in and out. Sometimes there just aren’t words other than “I really love this.”
[9]
Thomas Inskeep: My husband, upon hearing that I had to review this: “You’d better give it a good review!” He’s a huge fan of both Andy Butler and John Grant; I’m less so, but this is a very inspired marriage of song and singer. Returning to the soil he hoed on the H&LA eponymous debut, The Feast of the Broken Heart is true modern disco, and like Antony Hegarty on that record, John Grant fronting dance music is a smart move on the parts of everyone involved. Taken out of his land of acoustic guitar and plopped down amidst orchestra hits, Grant actually gains some resonance and power, while Butler gets the great gravitas he needs for a song with this emotional heft.
[8]
Scott Mildenhall: Disco heartbreak taken to a level beyond heartbreak, at least in the time-honoured tears in the toilets sense. Others have done it talking about Vietnam, or Hiroshima, but, like with “Smalltown Boy” it can still be aligned with the personal. With that it doesn’t just feel more serious, it also feels more immediate; doubly weird with the disco no less prominent. “In The Night 1995” meets the flourishing piano of 70s ABBA as well as haunted 80s ABBA, with Grant a Guy Garvey-esque weary angel, barely inflecting, bringing instead the plainest, deadened dolour.
[9]