The Sia-Industrial Complex claims another victory…
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[5.50]
Katherine St Asaph: Promises success, where “success” means the chance to be engulfed by repurposed Sia glop like some hellish Kids’ Choice Awards segment and failure sounds more appealing. Crappy comparison, but maybe it isn’t the worst thing in the world Universal hasn’t released Azealia’s album.
[3]
Alfred Soto: Of course it’s pointless to separate the sung portion from Angel’s quick, intelligent aerobics, but Sia’s presence bespeaks commercial uncertainty. Given the album’s performance, it didn’t work. So we’re back to nowhere.
[4]
Patrick St. Michel: For all the compromises I’m sure Angel Haze had to make when she signed up with Universal, she deserves credit for still sounding as forceful as she did on her mixtapes, capable of turning Beats-By-Dre-worthy fluff into a light slap to the face. Still, the whole song is still a little too believe-in-yourself-by-numbers, and that Sia hook shoots way too high for greatness.
[5]
Abby Waysdorf: I hope this is successful, because otherwise it’s just sort of embarrassing for all concerned. Aggressively generic and chart-chasing, from the obligatory Sia hook to the looping piano to the Nike-commercial lyrics about working hard and believing in yourself. There’s very little personality to set this song from any other song with Sia as the chorus, at least until the last verse when we finally hear a bit of what Angel Haze brings to the table, a little more emotion (and swearing) instead of the listless repeating of platitudes. It’s a shame that she’s trapped in such easy-listening blankness.
[5]
Megan Harrington: Angel Haze is getting, I think, more than her fair share of knocks for an underwhelming debut. I have a lot of affection for “Battle Cry” and for the conversation Haze forges with Eminem, first with her mixtape take on “Cleaning Out My Closet” and then here with her spin on the “Stan” template. Sia’s crescendo choruses recall nothing more than Em’s Dido sample, but “Battle Cry” is a song that wants to mean something to you. Perhaps it wants that so transparently that it self-sabotages. “Stan” is our adjective of choice for the obsessive fan, still barbed over a decade since its debut. Is “Battle Cry” going to be a generational “Lean On Me?” No. Haze isn’t prepared to be a mainstream safety net, but that shouldn’t be the damp to her flame. It’s disconcerting when a song that, however thickly, only wants to offer a little solace is greeted with such a resounding thud.
[8]
Anthony Easton: Her aggression, the radical atheism, the self-fashioning, the sweet tempering of that piano line, the working through of what might actually be considered inspirational. February is a broke down, fucked-up month, but this will go on the mix that helps me survive it.
[9]
Cédric Le Merrer: A battle cry without a battle. Angel is vying for inspirational but relies on Sia to provide content for her declaration of intentions. Unfortunately, like much of Sia’s recent work, this is sorely lacking in specifics.
[4]
Scott Mildenhall: Angel Haze is only on less than half of this track (guess who counted?) and that leaves a lot of time for a lot of choruses (six of them!), ones Sia may well have just recovered from the back of her metaphorical sofa. Doubtless there’s brilliance elsewhere in that sofa, but the problem with the hook she’s cooked up here is that it really isn’t very catchy, lacking much to back up how it turns the ever-frenzied Haze’s assertions of spontaneous combustion into something unfittingly schmaltzy.
[5]
David Sheffieck: After the reception Dirty Gold got, pushing this as a single seems like a conscious attempt to recenter the narrative: a lyric like “Go, Haze, they can’t stop you/ Heavyweight flow, if they can’t lift you then they can’t drop you/ The pinnacle, if they can’t reach you then they can’t top you/ Man they can’t do anything that you’re about to” takes on new meaning now, a weight it couldn’t have possibly had back when Haze was just another artist with a highly-anticipated debut in the wings. Life’s imitated art, and the art has gained from it — I enjoyed the self-help vibe of Dirty Gold (the main problem there was uninspired production), and I think “Battle Cry” earns additional power for its inspirational aphorisms when it’s heard with the weight of Angel’s recent history.
[7]
Brad Shoup: The weird thing is, Eminem’s output is nothing but this sort of thing and he doesn’t need to float Leak One. There’s a cap on the power of paddling piano and drum grenades — certainly now, and probably always. Still, when she raps that she has lives in her hands, you don’t think of multiple personalities or mall twerps.
[5]