Monday, we’ve got Friday on our mind…
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[2.50]
Anthony Easton: English country has existed for decades: they have taken Dolly Parton as one of their one (see the Glastonbury show last year), the Beatles absorbed Buck Owens, the Mekons absorbed punk rock, the folk revival scavenged and returned the West Country diaspora, Richard Thompson talked to Elvis Costello about Hank Williams, line dancing is popular in the north of England. It’s a huge scene, not as huge as Norway or Germany, but big enough. This full scale absorption of Nashville’s sound, then, is much less surprising than it might be. Crissie Rhodes, half of this band, did well enough on X-Factor, and it seems to be a foregone conclusion that reality shows reward country more than other genres. As opposed to the rest of those examples, I worry this song rewards a Nashville monoculture, but it’s pleasant.
[4]
Iain Mew: The first few times I saw the name I mistook them for The Shirehorses, but no, it’s something more unlikely to see in the UK album charts: British country. I quite like their “Nashville Grey Skies” and its earnest message that they won’t let their pedal steel sleep in their hand until they’ve built Nashville in England’s green and pleasant land. “Friday Night” and its indistinguishable drinking-song moves just suggest that they succeeded all too well.
[3]
Josh Love: Show’s over, American-made pop country. The British Invasion is here. Soon the likes of Miranda Lambert and Toby Keith will seem as charmingly quaint as Dion and Gary U.S. Bonds did to Beatlemaniacs, now that The Shires have arrived. OK, so maybe that’s not what’s going on here at all, but “Friday Night” is still a charming little tune that suggests this UK duo has cannily studied the likes of Little Big Town and The Band Perry. They might have even slipped a little Vampire Weekend into the rotation; that hiccuping repetition of “night” at the end of the chorus hits the same sweet spot of slightly grating goofiness as the pitch-shifting in “Ya Hey.”
[6]
Patrick St. Michel: The person who will hear this and decide, “yah know, The Shires are right, it is OK for me to get a little drunk on a Friday night” either should most certainly not be getting a little drunk or would be an absolute bore to be around in any state. This sounds as tedious as the working week it seeks to let off steam from.
[2]
Will Adams: This sounds like your boss putting on a Hawaiian shirt, slapping you on the back and thrusting a beer in your hand at 4:59pm, encouraging you to “live a little” — a cheap, unconvincing plot to obscure just how dull and tedious the office is.
[4]
Micha Cavaseno: Yeah, that squeak on the end of the chorus is the sound of the Saturday morning buzzer on your alarm waking you and making you realize you made a gigantic mistake in making it through this song. I need one of those hangover cures that tastes like asphalt. Ugh.
[2]
Alfred Soto: All you blue staters dissing country for jocking hair metal riffs? Here’s Jim Beam vomit in your eye. Instead of riffs, The Shires offer a banjo that could’ve been a Synclavier sample. Instead of attitude, I get an office assistant sloshed on his first Manhattan at 4:30.
[2]
Brad Shoup: Are songwriters so hard up that they need to go to the ’90s adult-alternative-rock well? That soggy pneumatic drum sound never sounded good. And a hook should never involve these poor kids keening like cockatoos.
[1]
Edward Okulicz: Reminds me of a bro-ier take on Shawn Mullins’s “Lullaby,” with some dated beats straight out of 1999 and lyrics about the weekend being fun rather than everything being alright. Well done on a successful proof of concept, Britishes, but fuck you and don’t do it again.
[0]
Thomas Inskeep: Congratulations, Britain: you’ve produced a homegrown country act that sounds just as boring as the most mediocre Nashville band. Actually, worse.
[1]