Chilean duo survives two PC Music comparisons in chipper style.
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[6.56]
Will Adams: Having been spoiled by Yasutaka Nakata’s immersive electroscapes with Perfume for so long, “Mai Lov” sounds thin and stiff by comparison. There’s still lots to like here though, from Mariana Montenegro’s carbonated vocal to the synth guitar solo on the bridge.
[6]
Juana Giaimo: Dënver knows adolescent dreams well enough to distort them completely. “Mai Lov” tells a specific situation that has appeared many times in movies: being behind the boy you like on his motorcycle, clutching his back and feeling the adrenaline inside of you. But while in movies, the pleasure lies in being protected by your boy, “Mai Lov” is instead about the seductive power of danger. Although the images are more shocking than previously, they are still subtle and include plain romantic images — “if I make the effort/I can even be your Milky Way” — in between sinister ones. If in the movie scene, the director would have chosen a placid song to transmit freedom, Dënver instead chose the artificial sound of J-Pop to reflect their double intentions; although the voice may be childish and the scene quite innocent, inside her head she is fully conscious of her sinful pleasures, as can be shown in the prechorus: “Come on, speed up, mai love/that death awaits us,” Mariana sings first and one may think that it alludes to the vertigo of speed, but she then pushes the limit further in the second line: “Do it with more strength, mai love/that death ashames me.”
[9]
Iain Mew: There’s something in the brash cheapness of “Mai Lov,” its high-pitched in-your-face eagerness, which makes me think of PC Music and the like. Dënver keep going further, though, not just holding hyper-pop oddity in tongs at arm’s length, but seeing how far they can push it, what else they can add to it to make it flash and bang, to cause a reaction and create something new and more fun. The resultant electro-disco explosion is a delightful one.
[8]
Alfred Soto: Those baseball stadium pep rally synths have the density of the vocals, i.e. helium.
[5]
Thomas Inskeep: Vocals a bit twee for my taste, music a bit too pneumatic.
[4]
John Seroff: Here’s a Mad-Lib amalgam of sounds and concepts that would’ve been more or less unimaginable in the pre-internet era: an umlauted, Chilean, indie-pop duo whose lead single fronts remixed Munch cover art, bleeps and whorls like PC Music, and Google-Translates what sounds like candied and innocuous Spanglish lyrics into semi-comprehensible vampgoth (“Do it, harder harder / Do it Mai Lov/That death shames me and my back”). “Mai Love” is a strangely appealing dust devil, well-served by spending the brunt of its pastel fury in a tidy three minutes.
[7]
Micha Cavaseno: Its chipper, mockingly so, but you can’t say you wouldn’t think it was cute in the right time or place.
[5]
Edward Okulicz: The first thing this reminded me of was Yellow Note vs Pukka’s “Naked, Drunk and Horny,” which I mean as high praise. The end reminds me of “Barbie Girl,” which I also mean as high praise. Slowed down, I could believe it was the work of a moonlighting Annie or Betty Who, which is fun to imagine, but please don’t test this theory out as I bet slowing it down sounds horrible.
[8]
David Sheffieck: The sugar rush of the synths grows unexpectedly grating shortly after the bridge, but there’s a truly thrilling 2-minute pop song located here, stretched just a little longer than it can bear.
[7]