You should see us in a frown…
[Video]
[3.71]
Katherine St Asaph: The greatest argument for Billie Eilish’s singular talent is how utterly boring Finneas’s solo material has generally been. So “American Cliche” is an immediate improvement for not sounding like Ed Sheeran. What it does sound like is “Big Spender” via “Personal Jesus” (except not nearly as good as that’d be), sung by Anthony Kiedis via Jack Johnson jauntsmarm, with a couple stretches of whisperbeat in the middle that makes one wonder what Finneas could be capable of if he produced for himself what he produces so well for others. I have absolutely no idea how this will go over; it seems to be a bet that certain loud zoomers’ embrace of theater-kidness will outvote certain (and even louder) Gen-Xers and millenials’ undue hate for it.
[5]
Aaron Bergstrom: Emily in Paris: The Musical!
[4]
David Moore: This starts by promising and/or threatening to launch into “Mambo No. 6” but settles into Chicago-style theatrical bombast and another mumbling vocal in a sea of mumbling vocals, which is to say this guy could never handle Chicago.
[4]
Austin Nguyen: If “American Cliché” is supposed to be Finneas’ Hollywood debut as director, screenwriter, and composer, I want my money back. The graininess of the horns, there for some vintage-filter effect (I guess?), is sandpaper compared to the crisp finger snaps later on, and his portamentos — a cross between Hozier and Dan Reynolds — do him no favors. This might all be excusable with a redemptive chorus and/or bridge, a fleshed-out scene where the titular tourist meets “a girl in a French café” with romantic tension. Instead we get: improperly delivered dialogue (“How’d I get along so long without you?” sits in the air about half as long as it’s supposed to), wheezing-ASMR delivery as if he just took the stairs down the Eiffel Tower, “Back to Black” piano staccatos, and the world’s tiniest flamenco guitar (Are we in Spain now? Is this actually Hemingway?). We also get romanticizing drunk sex that….doesn’t actually seem like sex (and he knows that). At least Finneas knows to save the best for last; having your mic-drop line be a text-response in an IRL conversation (alternative lyrics: “And you say ‘[mood OR LOL OR k]'”) is like savoring the moment you get left on read — which is anything but a cliché!
[3]
Andrew Karpan: The cliches that Billie Eilish’s brother most opulently evokes here were perhaps best performed by Ryan Gosling’s character in La La Land: a fellow searcher for swing whose only trouble is that it doesn’t mean a thing.
[2]
Oliver Maier: Billie has better songs if I care to hear what Finneas can do behind the boards. Otherwise you’d be as well off listening to “Miss Kiss Bang Bang” for about 90% of the same things happening musically and none of the self-seriousness.
[3]
Wayne Weizhen Zhang: Part Apple-commercial background music, part swingy speakeasy music, part understated Fall Out Boy cosplay, part cliché, “American Cliché” is another reminder that despite how much I want to like Finneas, he hasn’t made yet made compelling music without his sister.
[5]