New to FOX this fall: WHEN SEX IS NOT ON FIRE…

[Video][Myspace]
[5.20]

M. H. Lo: Dear Lily, remember how everyone crawled up my ass for misusing the word “ironic”? Yeah. You might want to be careful, because you have an odd understanding of “fairness.” Apparently, your boyfriend is smart, mature, loves you, does not beat you, “treats you with respect” – but sucks in bed, and, how you say, pulls his trigger a bit too quickly. But you realize that the universe does not owe you a perfect man, right? That, if it dealt you a man with one flaw, it’s not exactly an injustice worthy of a Nuremberg trial, or even a petulant lyric, yes? That you could try, oh, telling him what works for you, or maybe learn the squeeze technique? I’m just sayin’. Love, Alanis.
[6]

Edward Okulicz: Not fair? Not funny either. Suppose a man, say, Mike Skinner, put out a song that went “My bird is rubbish at sucking dick and halfway through us doing it pretends to have a headache, man, that’s a load of pants”, what score would you give it? Okay, swap the genders, keep that score intact. Lily Allen’s misandrous moaning shoots for witty but sinks under obvious rhymes, labored lines and a delivery that alternates between bored, boring and “can you believe I just said that?”. Yes, we can, we were trying to avoid listening to the atrociously dinky country pastiche you were inflicting on the world.
[0]

Iain Mew: At least when staying clear of politics, Lily has kept the easy humour of most of her debut, losing a bit of cheeky instancy but gaining some more lasting musical depth. She also seems to have acquired a habit of switching between ‘you’ and ‘he’ at random in lyrics, for instance throwing you out of the story at an inopportune time in this otherwise gently pleasing space-country number.
[6]

Martin Kavka: Some people might think that the two-step rhythm here is more evidence that Lily Allen has no sense of what kind of artist she is, but country music has always been the backing for the most moving of women’s complaints. So what’s more suitable than a banjo and harmonica to accompany her moaning about her lover’s premature ejaculation? I really want Miranda Lambert to cover this.
[8]

Hillary Brown: Say what you will about Allen’s focus on lyrics and vocal melody over the underlying structure of a song, this one has both done super-nicely, with a jaunty C&W bounce that pairs hilariously with her comical tale of bad sex.
[8]

Martin Skidmore: This could very easily become a clumsy whine or stridently irritating, but it’s sweetly and nimbly done, with an infectious skipalong tune and the odd burst of twanging guitar (which reminded me of “Ghost Riders in the Sky”). Another huge hit, undoubtedly, and rightly so – it’s lovely, and she’s found an obvious major relationship issue for millions of people that no one, as far as I know, has sung about before. I may be wrong there, but that’s still an achievement.
[9]

Jonathan Bradley: One of Lily Allen’s favorite, and, let’s be blunt, cheapest production tricks is to take supposedly naff genres and recontextualize them as part of the contemporary pop sphere she occupies. Importantly, she never does so by fully engaging with these genres; like her dilettante tourist in “LDN,” her genre-exploration is undertaken with as minimal an engagement on her behalf as possible. So she transformed ska, as on her first couple singles, into a brain-dead exercise in syncopation and sunshine, and she turned polka rhythms into a nauseating just-say-no lecture on “Alfie.” Her new single has her appropriating country, showing even more disdain for the musical traditions of the genre than she has with her previous influences. Over a rinky-dink “Rawhide” rhythm — deployed for no purpose greater than irony for the sake of irony, or, as the rest of the world knows it, abject stupidity —she complains about a sexually unsatisfying boyfriend, ever-mindful of the supposed daring of her subject matter, like a one-woman Family Guy episode. The entire point of the instrumental here is to demonstrate that Allen can adopt a genre as unfashionable as country and remain removed from its supposed cultural uncouthness; she clearly has no interest in developing a compelling tune out of these ideas, so let’s forget her indefensible musical choices and focus on the lyrics. Allen’s lyric is an exercise in merciless solipsism, and one so determined that she even makes her self-obsession an object of her self-obsession. Immediately after complaining that she has to sleep in the post-coital wet-spot after unsatisfying sex, she acknowledges “all the nice things” that her boyfriend has done for her. This is no exercise in humility, however. As with her entire career, Allen’s selfishness is mentioned only as a device to focus further attention on her own person. I don’t know whether Lily the woman is lovely or revolting, but Lily the recorded personality is a deeply unpleasant character. Worst of all, she is so unsympathetic that it is impossible to derive any joy from her own self-regard whatsoever.
[0]

Dave Moore: I initially disliked the way she automatically assumes the guy is somehow intentionally bad in bed, but then I figured out how to read the chorus more charitably – “it’s not fair and I think you’re really mean” is a childish thing to say to a person, but it’s an interesting thing to say to God: “why do you send me nice guys who can’t get me off?” Lily’s God is a strange fellow, after all – listens to Creedence, drives a car (sorry Joan Osborne, no public transit), possibly without insurance. Kind of a jerk, really.
[7]

Hazel Robinson : So he’s the nicest bloke you’ve ever gone out with but you haven’t alerted him to the fact you’re not enjoying the bedroom encounters all that much so he must be really mean? Maybe I’m just not a very modern woman, but personally I might just say something to him, rather than making a cutesy-cutesy little song with ‘royalties cheque due from GIRLS NIGHT IN VOL. 45’ written all over it.
[3]

Ian Mathers: Well, Lily, if he doesn’t care in bed and is thus shit (and the song does present him as actively bad, not just fumbling or suffering from bad chemistry), then he doesn’t respect you, does he? It’s sad, you’d think someone in Allen’s position could afford to be more choosy rather than settling for someone who’s a nice guy out of bed and a selfish prick in it. Interesting enough topic for a song, but Allen’s delivery is a little pallid and the random country flourishes are just distracting – like its subject matter, “Not Fair” seems nice enough but is a bit crap.
[5]

Third solo single for the idiosyncratic Seeed frontman…

[Video][Website]
[5.71]

Edward Okulicz: German is often a poor language for rap just because of how it sounds – mechanical and with too many of those soft “ch” sounds that make it stick in the back of the throat a little much. But it’s hard to argue with the stalking backbeat and dark-alley-whistling here.
[7]

Martin Skidmore: I loved Adam F’s productions with US hip hop stars: the huge and dramatic orchestral combinations with potent beats. This German single is aiming at similar territory, I think, but seems a little underpowered, though the strings do give a moody atmosphere. It’s in German, so I have no idea if the sense of darkness fits whatever he is rasping at us – I want it to be something between “Ghost Town” and Skinnyman’s “Council Estate of Mind”, which would make this work well. The mark is based on my imagining that is the case…
[8]

Martin Kavka: Over minor-key horn chords and strings, Peter Fox raps about the skill that Berlin has to alienate its residents, as a result of its drug culture, uncleanlines and general ugliness. This isn’t exactly a new theme either for rap or for treatments of Berlin. But why is his answer to go to bed and wait for the sun to rise? Is social action that impossible? In other words, Bertolt Brecht this isn’t.
[4]

Hillary Brown: If you think “Gasolina” would have been much better if it were just a whole heck of a lot more Teutonic and less fun, Peter Fox has you covered.
[4]

Ian Mathers: It’s weird – the big stonking beat and those far-off, majestic horns both work tremendously well on their own terms, but they seem to be getting in each other’s way. I kind of want this either to go totally beat-crazy or else turn into something really imperious, but it’s stranded in the slightly awkward middle ground between the two. Still, German – what a great language to rap in, eh?
[6]

Additional Scores

Dave Moore: [4]
Hazel Robinson : [7]

We just cannot agree on anything these days, eh?…

[Video][Myspace]
[5.00]

Martin Kavka: The All Around The World label – which has released N-Trance, Cascada, and Dannii Minogue – tries to make money by butching it up, much as it did in 2007 with T2’s “Heartbroken.” This time, AATW’s claim to release the “biggest track of the year” is a song that seeks to start a dance craze. Doesn’t anyone remember previous dance crazes? Doop. Macarena! Eventually, they end up only being popular with pre-schoolers. As a result, AATW will soon have to put together a compilation entitled Kiddie Clubland, featuring its new stab at a hit, “Miss Muffet In the (Hokey) Pokey.”
[2]

Ian Mathers: Christ, when will rappers learn that jacking old nursery rhymes and childhood learning songs is just annoying, especially when accompanied by such a graceless synth and some enthusiastic jackass going “bubbley, bubbley”?
[3]

Dave Moore: This is probably as close as funky house is ever going to get to a bar mitzvah, somewhere between Crazy Cousinz “Bongo Jam” and the Hokey Pokey. Probably shouldn’t hold out for the Kidz Bop version, though.
[9]

Alex Macpherson: An object lesson in how hard it is to make a floorfiller based around a gimmicky dance craze which actually works – and also that when it does work, it may be the highest possible form of pop music. This works because as well as being hella catchy, the dancehall-inflected backing, with its trancey synth stabs and bubbling melody, is wild and frenetic in its own right. As for the dance, you couldn’t accuse KIG of over-complicating matters – the titular movements, plus “Ladies, lemme see you get down low!” are all you need to know- though it should be noted that it works the shit out of your thigh muscles, and a surprising degree of coordination is needed when it’s taken backwards. (Also: check out remixes from Crazy Cousinz and Donae’o, who rhymes “fire and brimstone” with “make the bed rock gyal like Flintstone”).
[10]

Doug Robertson: About a month or so there was a news report about this song on the telly. Admittedly it was on Channel 5, so this definition of news is about as loose as their definition of quality TV, but it still counts, and it’s always nice to see them try and engage with an audience who might be outside their usual “Hitler and Sharks” demographic. It’s just a shame that their brief flirtation with something more, and I put the quote marks here only because I’m sure they would too, ‘urban’ has to rest on something so childish and slight. It’s probably a YouTube phenomenon. These things normally are these days.
[4]

Additional Scores

Hillary Brown: [2]
Edward Okulicz: [4]
Martin Skidmore: [6]

Three albums later, she finally gets the privilege of having Justin Timberlake grope her arse. This is what we call progress…

[Video][Myspace]
[6.10]

Martin Kavka: Ciara bets that she can make me believe in, among other things, sex. I have my doubts; I know for a fact that human reproduction occurs through budding.
[3]

Jordan Sargent: It’s hard to begrudge Ciara for “Love, Sex & Magic”, seeing as her third album has been totally bungled by her label and completely plundered by the internet. She’s apparently entered “I’ll try anything once” mode, and here she slips on JT’s FutureSex/LoveSounds fedora, listlessly coasting through an uninspired bit of post-2006 Timbaland disco. Timberlake’s beat struts effortlessly, but everything else is wholly uninspiring, including the “chemistry” between the two, which is so nonexistent you can almost visualize their vocals being spliced in ProTools. And here’s something I never thought I’d say about a Ciara single: it would sound better as an MGMT song.
[5]

Alex Macpherson: A choice of single which initially disappointed – mostly because it wasn’t ‘High Price’, ‘Echo’ or ‘Work’, the astonishingly great demos for Ciara’s imminent Fantasy Ride which leaked over the past six months. But ‘Love Sex Magic’ – a jump-off from FutureSex/LoveSounds, but with Justin kept under control to just be his sexy self – has irresistible charms of its own. The slinky, silky rhythm, so conducive for hot dancefloor moves; the vocal switch-up to a sultry purr which both Justin and Ciara essay midway through their verses; the way the “part where we fall in love” is as perfunctory as possible, so they can get back to the more important business of shagging. Two out of three ain’t bad.
[8]

John M. Cunningham: It’s hard for me to resist hints of light funk in current R&B, especially here, where the voices of Ciara, still weightless but with a new elasticity, and Monsieur Timberlake, that charmer, blend so well amid the mildly flirtatious bounce. Points for acknowledging the contrivance of the bridge (even as it serves as sweet counterpoint); points off because I can’t shake the feeling that there’s a bigger hook they’re suppressing. But that’s a quibble.
[8]

Iain Mew: The slow section where Ciara sings “let’s slow it down so we fall in love” is typical of a weirdly coy unspecific song which is the epitome of telling and not showing. “I bet you know what I mean” seems a bit hopeless by the end of it.
[5]

Additional Scores

Hillary Brown: [5]
Joseph McCombs: [6]
Hazel Robinson : [4]
Martin Skidmore: [9]
Alex Wisgard: [8]

He’s got an acoustic. And he’s got a synth. What’s a boy to do? Well…

[Video][Myspace]
[5.25]

M. H. Lo: Perhaps mindful that his status as Scrawny One-Man Electronic Act is being threatened by Sam Sparro Frankmusik, Calvin stomps back with a number that harkens back to 90s euphoric trance. Judged against those standards, “I’m Not Alone” doesn’t boast an especially memorable riff; for crissakes, it isn’t even played on pizzicato strings. What the riff does do, intriguingly, is help complexify the song, which, despite its sound, describes someone tired of the club scene (“Can you stay up for the weekend till next year? God I can’t do this anymore”). He sees a “light flashing” and “a man waving,” whereupon the riff hits – but it is thus ambiguous whether it represents our singer dying and seeing God, or if a mere fellow clubber with a glowstick pulls him back into the orbit of the scene.
[6]

Martin Skidmore: I don’t mind the music – a bit plinky when we don’t get the trancey synth stabs, which sound a decade out of date and rather simpleminded – but the singing completely ruins it for me, weak and wimpy, tuneless and characterless.
[2]

Edward Okulicz: Good trance pastiches should, in theory, have the catchy tunes of the genre they’re pillaging. Why can’t he ruin a genre of music I don’t like for once?
[1]

Ian Mathers: I was actually well glad when the stadium synths kicked in, as before that this sounded like an office party Antony imitation. On subsequent listens, that more subdued opening actually works, but really the track kicks in once Harris’ callow voice has something big and buzzy to contrast with. And really, I am a sucker for big, brash synth pop sung by shy nerds.
[7]

Martin Kavka: This sounds like a remix of Vashti Bunyan or some other ’60s British folkie. You might think that this kind of genre-bending exercise is doomed to fail. But it works incredibly well because no one genre gets to win; the dance beats work against the depressed lyric. Years from now, this will be seen as the expression of 2009 recession culture, which desperately wants to slow down but just can’t.
[9]

Doug Robertson: Well, Calvin’s always been a little bit backwards looking, but this would struggle to be acceptable in the eighties or even the mid nineties, let alone the present day. At best it sounds like Bloc Party making a decent stab at getting themselves airplay on Dave Pearce’s Dance Anthems, while at worst it sounds like someone who’s suddenly found himself in the limelight and isn’t quite sure what to do now they’ve got there.
[4]

Additional Scores

Keane Tzong: [8]
Alex Wisgard: [5]

Basic by name…

[Video][Myspace]
[5.33] 

Dave Moore: Precisely choreographed good vibes via Alcazar and a bit of goofy rapping via…I dunno, Marky Mark (hm, more good vibes…)? A fairly unstoppable Europop number, but there’s also something oddly restrained about it.
[6]

Martin Kavka: The chorus goes “I’ve got to touch you right now; try to keep it down so nobody hears.” What the fuck does that mean? Is it “Don’t be alarmed, but I have to touch you”? Or is it “Please put that can of mace back in your purse”? Or even perhaps “You’re really hot, but my friend at the bar tells me that you’re extremely loud in bed. That’s a real turnoff for me, but I wonder whether we might be able to work out a compromise, because I’m exceptionally horny, before I do you right here in public”? ‘Tis a puzzlement.
[4]

Hillary Brown: Rather loud, considering the message of the song, which is more than a little creepy, but awfully catchy for a song that could be Uncle Ernie’s theme.
[5]

Jessica Popper:This is a pretty conventional 21st century Eurodance song, but it’s one of the catchiest I’ve heard lately. For once, someone remembered to put in a hook! They’ve released 6 albums and 19 singles in Sweden, yet still they’re utterly unknown in the UK and have never had a top 40 hit. I think this cheery, energetic song could break that trend, if it was given the chance. The singer may be rather ugly, but the song is much better than what some of the young Swedish boy popstars are doing right now. The only problem is the weird, mumbly rap.
[8]

Ian Mathers: This kind of very basic, pro forma Eurodance music that seems to crop up perennially over there can go one of two ways: like the best meat-and-potatoes rock, it can be a surprisingly satisfying reminder of why a genre and its tropes are so successful, nourishing for its straightforward simplicity as much as anything else; or it can seem braindead and derivative, another example of why the genre and its tropes are basically bankrupt. From the robotized female voice intoning the title at the start to the awkwardly gruff rapping to the same goddamn synth setting everyone and their mother has used, Basic Element falls into the latter camp.
[3]

Additional Scores

M. H. Lo: [5]
Edward Okulicz: [7]
Martin Skidmore: [4]
Alex Wisgard: [6]

Now this… this, we like…

[Video][Website]
[8.36]

Alex Wisgard: As big a curveball as “Gold Lion”, but at least ten times more dancefloor-friendly, in the best possible way.
[8]

Jonathan Bradley: Karen O’s words are not nice (“You’re a zero/What’s your name/No one’s gonna ask you”), but she’s worked out how to sing them with something approaching sympathy. Her delivery is more fragile than ever, and at the points where her voice soars to a spine-melting high note and collides with a diving synth, the song sounds as if it is on the verge of smashing into a thousand tiny pieces. The weird tensions set up within the compact pop structure drive this tune: bleeping electronics and bleeding guitars, a hook both triumphant and crushed, a frontwoman quietly disprited on a song rousingly anthemic. There’s nothing contradictory about its quality, however; “Zero” is quite simply one of the best songs of the year so far.
[9]

Keane Tzong: It seems odd to listen to a Yeah Yeah Yeahs song where the instrumental does almost all the work, or, if you want to be more negative, where the letdown comes from the vocal. Karen O doesn’t seem to be putting in too much effort here, and the results are pretty much what you’d expect of a Yeah Yeah Yeahs song with Karen subtracted from the equation: bland, bland, bland. She does, mercifully, make an effort to come alive during the middle eight, but it’s a bit too little, too late.
[6]

Martin Kavka: I’ve only ever really liked YYY’s “Maps” before now. But this is so exhilarating, propulsive, and accessible in its use of chord progressions to manufacture and release tension – the sonic equivalent of one of Paul Greengrass’ Bourne films – that this just might quite possibly the best song ever written. Bonus point for Karen O dancing just like Katrina in the “Walking On Sunshine” video.
[10]

Alex Macpherson: It’s Blitz is my second favourite album of 2009 so far, but ‘Zero’ is a merely passable lead single which gives few indications of the brilliance in store. It starts promisingly – buzzsaw riff, syncopated rhythm, Karen O preening, pouting and strutting – but gives itself up too soon. The chorus drifts up and away just when it needs to resolve, as if the band can’t wait to get to the more expansive aesthetic of the rest of the album despite ‘Zero’ being a punky stomper at heart; Karen O follows the melody in losing focus, and the song is left to be propped up by a scrawling guitar line whose broad, bold strokes can’t quite disguise a slightly underwhelming hook.
[6]

Ian Mathers: No, look, I know they’re supposed to be a trashy rock band or whatever, but I DON’T CARE. Show Your Bones was a good album, but this is just so much more exciting than anything on there. Their synthier new direction is absolutely the best direction they could have taken, assuming they keep coming up with songs as good as this and “Hysteric.” Hell, I like the middle eight bit of this better than the chorus of most songs. All due respect to the other two, but between her vocal and video performances, Karen O is one of my favourite people in rock right now (and I never got the appeal before).
[10]

Hillary Brown: Despite its negative lyrics, this new Yeah Yeah Yeahs track evokes nothing so much as an army of robotic bees pollenating fields and fields of flowers, spreading life and fertility across the globe, and it kind of just keeps getting better.
[8]

Additional Scores

John M. Cunningham: [7]
Doug Robertson: [10]
Jordan Sargent: [8]
Martin Skidmore: [10]

American Idol finds new way to get people off its lawn…

[Video (sort of)][Website]
[3.30] 

Alex Wisgard: I don’t know what’s worse: the fact this is a Motley Crue cover, or the fact I wouldn’t have noticed without someone pointing this fact out to me. Vince Neil fucked a girl named Bullwinkle for this?
[1]

Frank Kogan: Placid ballad; weightier instrumentation and heavier singing than is good for it, but her voice is warm. At least, that was my first impression. By the sixth or so “placid” turns into “wet blanket,” and the “warm” singing is way strained, which surprises me since this should be an easy glide for an excellent mimic like her. Good song, though, and I say this while having no memory of the original.
[4]

Jordan Sargent: As a piano-driven power ballad, “Home Sweet Home” only demonstrates something we already know: Carrie Underwood can really, really sing. And in that sense, it seems like something she might sing on American Idol with the sole purpose of just showing off her pipes. But there’s none of the swagger, snarl or attitude that’s made her the biggest star in country, and so the song drags along, feeling about eight minutes long even before the Fiery Guitar Solo flames out upon ignition.
[3]

Martin Kavka: “Home Sweet Home” is about dreams can screw you over, and indeed about how dreams are usually an evasion of our humdrum responsibilities. In other words, 19 Productions is telling each reject – before they are contractually bound to participate in the summer tour – that he or she is an idiot for having auditioned for this program in the first pace. [2]

Joseph McCombs: Couldn’t someone have rewritten the words to reflect the American Idol repurposing? It would have given the song some sensible context, avoided uncomfortable associations of “Sometimes nothing keeps me together at the seams” with the Tatiana Del Toros of the show, and rescued Carrie from lines that only work when the bar’s set low for subliterate goons. But the swelling Michael Kamenesque strings before the last chorus were a nice production touch. [5]

Ian Mathers: By the time the Bon Jovi-level drums kick in, I’m reminded that Ms. Underwood is apparently incapable of anything approaching subtlety (vocally, emotionally, lyrically, or in any other way). This song is yet more proof that country music doesn’t really exist any more, that ‘new country’ is just where MOR and AOR and soft rock went to die, that American Idol is a bankrupt pile of shit, that sometimes those gosh darned rockists have a fucking point. [0]

Additional Scores

Hillary Brown: [4]
Dave Moore: [5]
Al Shipley: [2]
Martin Skidmore: [7]

will.i.am shittin’ on y’all opens the Jukebox’s first-ever Slightly Delayed Tuesday…

[Video][MySpace]
[5.36]

Hillary Brown: This shit is more like plantains, maybe, than bananas.
[5]

Martin Kavka: How can a song that proclaims itself to be futuristic end up sounding so much like hip-hop from the early ’80s, especially Afrika Bambataa’s “Planet Rock”? How can Fergie proclaim herself to be “so 3008” when a guy in her own crew ends up quoting the title of Daft Punk’s “Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger”? I’ve got nothing against a track that seeks to be tweens’ first taste of adulthood, and this is not ineffective (despite a very annoyingly buzzy note that is sustained throughout almost the entire track). But let’s not conclude that this is anything more than a retread of past futurisms.
[7]

Ian Mathers: If any band sounds ridiculous making boastful claims about how far ahead of the curve they are, it’s these jackasses. Will.i.am is a half decent producer, but he and Fergie are two of the least welcome vocal presences on any songs, anywhere, and this is no exception. They are, apparently, shittin’ on ya with the boom boom pow. Doesn’t that sound delightful? And does Fergie really need Autotuning? And why is the production so schizophrenic?
[3]

John M. Cunningham: I’m tempted to laud will.i.am for the austere production here, which sounds like little else on pop radio, but the song’s disparate elements wind up jarring. (The eerie, mechanical spell of the first half, with its slithery digitized warbles, is broken when Fergie decides to belt it like she’s at a rodeo.) I’m not sure this works on even a superficial level.
[4]

Jordan Sargent: As it turned out, accidental avant-garde pop suited will and Fergie much better than pre-Kidz Bop’d party starters, or at the very least the Peas work best when they get retarded rather when they implore us to. “Boom Boom Pow”‘s weirdness:catchiness ratio is far higher than that of “My Humps”, so it’s unlikely that it will also rule the world. That would be a small shame though, as it would be pretty cool to have a song on US radio that sounds like T-Pain hooking up with Bangladesh to do funky house. Also, “shittin on y’all with the boom boom!” > “my lovely lady lumps”.
[8]

Martin Skidmore: Autotune is all over this, which loses it points with me, but I do like the beats, kind of minimal with shuddering synths and rather spooky high tones – reminds me a lot of hyphy. Hard to imagine Keak on silly club lyrics like this, but for me that thought emphasises the lack of character and human warmth that the vocoder brings to so much of this – you can’t imagine robots rocking anything.
[6]

Al Shipley: Fergie’s run of solo hits was so solid, sometimes even spectacular, that my otherwise low expectations for BEP were a little raised for this, especially when the most immediate point of comparison was clearly “Fergalicious.” Even at the same tempo, however, it lacks that song’s relentless pace, and the sonic ugliness of the AutoTune blather and droning synths drag down what would otherwise be a promisingly bonkers comeback.
[5]

Additional Scores

Dave Moore: [6]
Edward Okulicz: [2]
Alex Wisgard: [6]
Scott Woods: [7]

Slightly Delayed Tuesday continues with some Big Audio Marmite…

[Video][Myspace]
[4.00] 
Dave Moore: Goofy synth-bounce backing track puts the singer front and center, where she flails about whacking a solid melody around like a pinata.
[4]

Martin Kavka: There is absolutely no artistry here. These are our ingredients: a voice that sounds like a stuck pig, a rhythm that is only creative if you think that syncopating the beats on the three and the seven is radical, a synthesizer that sounds like it was someone else’s throwaway, and stupid lyrics (“what are feelings without emotions?”).
[1]

Keane Tzong: Your enjoyment of this song will depend entirely on whether or not you can learn to tolerate, or even like, Elly Jackson’s vocals. I would have guessed that most people wouldn’t, but here we are with a chart position of #11. “In for the Kill” is quite uncompromising: a lot of tuneful shrieking paired with a similarly aggressive instrumental. It carries on like that for four minutes, and then for one moment toward the end, everything drops away to let the aforementioned shrieking reach new highs. While in theory that could be disastrous, the harshness of the song adds to its charm: it makes a nice severe counterpoint to light, fuzzed-out electro without ever turning into something resembling blog-house, and for that it should be commended.
[9]

Alex Wisgard: Passable pop, as yapped by Kate Bush with her foot caught in a mousetrap. I don’t get it.
[4]

Edward Okulicz: How often can you say that a song gives you a headache even at minimal volume? I’m not saying the cheap 80s music (Depeche Mode played on a Commodore 64) isn’t amusing (though it is unappealing) and that Elly Jackson’s piercing shriek isn’t impressive, but the fact is that they sound absolutely hideous together. Painful, and not an exaggeration, either.
[1]

Doug Robertson: At school, the excitement in the room was always palpable on the days the keyboards got handed out during music lessons. Anticipation lingered in the air as hands reached out to turn the switch to the ‘on’ position, and there was a short yet significant moment of silent reverence as every child in the room briefly pondered the electro pop classics they were about to tease out of the mass of circuitry which lay in front of them. Of course, the silence was broken pretty much straight away as almost every child in the room promptly started hitting every key randomly as they worked their way through some of the more esoteric voice options, running the gamut of sounds from Flatulent Duck to Iffy Telephone. But for every 29 kids who never moved on from discovering the myriad ways middle C could sound, there’s always a couple who are more interested in discovering the myriad ways all the other notes could sound as well. La Roux were those kids, and they make a Casio sound like a staccato blast of robotic bodily fluids. More fervently alive than anything this electronic should be, you might want to dismiss them due to their regular appearances on the generally disappointing “Sound of 2009” style lists, but they deserve so much more than the brief flurry of hype followed by obscurity that normally follows such a billing. More Pong than Jing Jang Jong, if this truly is the sound of 2009, then it’s going to be one hell of a year.
[9]

Alex Macpherson: La Roux’s bafflingly ungrammatical stage name annoys from the off, and there is little else to suggest that the Romo wannabe is anything other than 2009’s most reprehensible new pop star. She wears a permanently blank, unsmiling facial expression, possibly labouring under the delusion that this is the same thing as possessing artistic mystique. (It merely makes her resemble a sulky teenage girl asked to clean her bedroom.) Her voice, too, is blank and unsmiling: a grating, po-faced shrill utterly bereft of charm. Behind it, cheap and nasty keyboards plinky-plonk away like some grim pub pop tribute to the ’80s (seriously, people, let it go now). The much-hyped Skream remix is an improvement, but given the continued presence of that harpy voice, not a significant one.
[0]

Ian Mathers: Wow, she really does have an annoying voice, huh? I mean, it doesn’t help that the backing sounds like the results of a Build Your Own Depeche Mode Starter Kit, or that the lyrical sentiment is both opaque and trite, but man. She’s got a really annoying voice.
[4]

Hillary Brown: Thin and underdeveloped but undeniably hooky, plus short enough not to get too annoying.
[7]

Martin Skidmore: This sounds hopelessly amateurish. I am led to believe they are set to be big, but I hope that proves incorrect. Horrible.
[1]