Last round! Final orders please, and tip your coat-check girl on the way out…
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[6.00]
Micha Cavaseno: It doesn’t matter who they back, the Daptone Crew are the most lifeless band in the history of soul, and its remarkable they’ve pulled off this long a con job on the world.
[3]
Thomas Inskeep: My problem with this single is the same problem I have with everything I’ve heard from Jones and her Dap-Kings: it’s essentially soul necrophilia. This is a time capsule of “soul ’67” (which reeks of mothballs and mildew) – and if I want to hear that, I’ll go back and listen to the original article. “Little Boys with Shiny Toys” sounds to me like nothing more than a museum piece, music trapped in amber.
[2]
Anthony Easton: Sharon Jones has a fantastic voice, but like with Leon Bridges, the historical nostalgia gets in the way of figuring out how this music fits in now — and I know she has had a decades long career, and I know that the cult of novelty is as dangerous as the cult of nostalgia.
[6]
Rebecca A. Gowns: Sharon Jones & The Dap Kings are known for being a “revivalist” soul band, a term that suggests imitation. In fact, for a good number of groups in this sub-genre, that’s all that’s going on: a struggle to reproduce a specific sound, leaving small gaps that remind you that they’re recording on high tech equipment into tinny digital files. Sharon Jones & The Dap Kings are in another league entirely. They’re not just a reproduction or dinky cover band — they’ve got their own, full-fledged sound, one that could compete with or be mixed into just about any other song from any era, with no gaps at all. There’s no struggle to recreate, just the pure joy of creation itself. On this single, they’re in top form as the Dap Kings groove with a wonderful percussion/brass arrangement, and Sharon Jones sings with full expression, balancing the irony between the verses beautifully (essentially: a man is excited about his newfound love, and his newfound love is wary; if he’s excited by “newness” alone, then will he still love her when she’s no longer new?). As clean and polished as the recording is, it crackles with the energy of live performance. A damn fine song.
[10]
Megan Harrington: By turns tightly kept behind the wall of sound and a shambolic pile rug romp, “Little Boys With Shiny Toys” fuses the best of soul and rock ‘n roll. There’s a subtext but when the text is simply sweet relief that Sharon Jones is once again commanding a session, she could be singing about anything and I’d nod along.
[8]
Will Adams: The sine curve bassline — rising, falling in regular periods — is a cool move, and Sharon Jones gives a zesty performance that distinguishes herself from the band. I just wish the chorus had more oomph.
[6]
Alfred Soto: The urgency of the chorus compensates for the rote ’60s Atlantic Records arrangement, and by the time the saxphone sasses things up I’d submitted.
[6]
Jonathan Bogart: Classic Stax punchiness, classic Philly melodic sophistication, classic auteur-period Motown social commentary. It’s hard to drag something so covered with the patina of respectable history into the disrepectable present. No one could hate this, so it’s hard to see what virtue loving it has.
[7]