You guessed it, it’s Sort Of Roy Orbison Day! Apologies to Motels stans…
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Alfred Soto: Not as sharp or lonely as the Motels or Rob Orbison, or as energetic as “Solo Dancing,” this settles for a dull midtempo churn: Chairlift without the hooks.
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Cédric Le Merrer: Indiana’s “Solo Dancing” was maybe the loneliest sound of last year. Things experienced alone, even cathartic dancing, are generally muted affairs, like a musicless music video. And like “Heart On Fire” proved, Indiana’s better at evoking loneliness than passion, even a desperate one. So this new track goes back to loneliness, but tries to pull the trick of making an anthem for people who will never sing it together. Imagine a more animated version of the ending song in Magnolia. It walks a fine line between a song for the club and all those would-be anthems anchored by big plodding bass drums that have been fashionable since Arcade Fire switched indie rock’s favorite pronoun to “we”. And it makes a better case for this marriage than Avicii does. Not calling up a crowd of backup singers for the chorus was smart. So what we end up with is a kind of one person-sized anthem, with lyrics about multitudes seemingly sung just for you, and a beat that’ll never fill a floor bigger than your apartment’s.
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Anthony Easton: The trick behind “Solo Dancing” was to make an act that seemed lonely sound self-directed enough that it refused anything close to that reading. This perfect Pet Shop Boys-infused ode to urban ennui cashes in all of the chips she earned for that trick and pushes them in the exact opposite direction. A perfect one-two punch, minus a couple of points for being just a little bit expected.
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Iain Mew: I loved the similar conceit in Fiona Bevan’s “Us and the Darkness” — insomniacs linked together in their solitariness — and making the bond one between the lonely is better yet. It’s much more of a soft focus mood piece than either of Indiana’s previous singles, but the mood is just right for singing about being lost and far away and the idea is strong enough that it doesn’t need more.
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Will Adams: The chorus begins to approximate “Time After Time,” then falls off a cliff. Meanwhile, Indiana is swallowed by the reverbed-to-all-hell synthscape, and suddenly her plaint of “Why can’t anybody hear me?” makes total sense.
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Ashley Ellerson: I seriously thought this was Ellie Goulding, and I kind of feel bad about that, but Indiana makes it difficult to distinguish herself in the lonely pop game with this.
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Katherine St Asaph: She’s never going to make another “Solo Dancing,” is she?
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Dorian Sinclair: The lyrical ideas expressed here are nothing new, but there’s a fragmentedness to the lines that really underscores the vulnerability. Indiana doesn’t need to tell us we’re lost (though she does) — the sound of the song drives that point home very effectively, all echoes and spare harmonies. I’m also struck by the brief instrumental segment after the bridge, leading into the final chorus; it’s unexpected, but all the more impactful because of that. It feels like a response to the bridge’s “Why can’t anybody see me?” — after Indiana’s question trails off, the music surges as if to suggest that maybe we are seeing her after all. It’s a small moment, but one that makes the song a lot more interesting than it otherwise would be.
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Mo Kim: There are so many good details here. There are the little strands of background melody twisting around the plaintive longing in Indiana’s voice; the percussion thumping just a smidgen harder every eight measures; that blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moment in the bridge where all sound cuts out, a breath held just before plunging back into a ocean of warm synths and thundering drums; the little coos drawn out in that last chorus. If this is a song about loneliness, it is also a song about solidarity, about warmth found in the layers of shared experience.
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