Call us The Squidward Jukebox…
[Video][Website]
[2.67]
Crystal Leww: Who the hell told these over-educated, rich, acapella singing frat boys that they should make music?
[1]
Anthony Easton: Is being annoyed at this a mark that I am growing too old to engage in teenage shenanigans, or is it that there is just too much shit going on here?
[3]
Patrick St. Michel: “How I feel is that the Internet has ruined the human race” — Lil B on “Age Of Information“/me after some Animal-Collective-meets-fun. urchins used a Spongebob sample before a bass drop.
[0]
Jonathan Bradley: I want to praise the inventiveness of the arrangement — the Nickolodeon hook, the iceberg-sized bass chunk, the handclaps — but none of that matters when that cheery white soul vocal enters. The combination of the DIY and the synthetic is uncanny like homemade margarine.
[3]
Iain Mew: I would never have placed its sample as Spongebob if not for Josh, so bear that in mind, but I like “I’m Ready.” AJR’s gormless enthusiasm is just the thing to make “ooh-weeeeeeeee” joyful, and between the unusually sparing vworps, claps, and the sample there’s a lot of invention and enough variety to keep any of the novel elements turning irritating. Only the fear of making sense of the words is keeping me from loving it more.
[7]
Brad Shoup: Those are some wet handclaps. Can’t drown that hashtag reference, though. I admire the moxie of these boys, cooking up so many jivey pop simulacra. The brostep fizz is fresh out the box. The Mrazzy piano breakdown goes for a joke but becomes one instead. The Spongebob sample is a Spongebob sample. The shuffle bit doesn’t have much current chart company, but do they really think bass rings? It’s the grotesque funhouse mirror version of pop radio.
[5]
Alfred Soto: “Indie pop” their bio says, confident we’ll know what it means. Songs with hand claps? Reggae presets? Lyrics that mention hashtag signs? Vocals as scrubbed as a new toilet? So different it’s familiar.
[2]
Daniel Montesinos-Donaghy: Well now: twenfth-wave ska, piano balladry, slobbed-not-chopped cross-genre hobnobbery, #jokes, all the studio effects. Lumbering, charmless, fluttery optimism, like a Buzzfeed listicle turned into aural reality by A Band of Bros. Lawdhamercy.
[2]
Will Adams: “Someday I’ll be so damn sublime” is one of the more obvious references in this already derivative piece of lite-reggae. But where Sublime had a lo-fi haze enhancing Brad Nowell’s mumbles, AJR opt for a sanitized, trebly sound; the multi-tracked vocals, bass sweeps and out-of-the-box drums are compressed and polished to an inch of their lives. Combine the squeaky clean everything with a self-conscious, Internet-savvy video, and “I’m Ready” is an aural sycophant. Too bad there’s nothing good to back it up; the song is built upon a leaden chorus and is plagued with unpleasant sounds (hearing Spongebob’s enthusiastic motto being thrown into a reverb tunnel is one of my least favorite musical moments this year). If this somehow anticipates a trend of pop that is even more saturated, cloying and sterile in 2014 than it is now, let me be the first to say that no, I’m not ready.
[1]