It’s no Petula Clark…
[Video][Website]
[5.00]
Edward Okulicz: I usually like Cut Copy a lot, but this is about the least flattering setting imaginable for Daniel Whitford’s vocals. Annie evoked the catchy essence of K-Klass’s eternal classic a lot more efficiently without having to clumsily graft bits of it onto a disorientating slow-mo squiggle of early ’90s dance tropes. What’s annoying is that the final third of this track is good — add a little piano and things start falling into place. Someone should have shown them a bit earlier.
[5]
Patrick St. Michel: The back half of this totally redeems the first, which sounds like “Macarena.”
[5]
Alfred Soto: With “Need You Now” forgotten, these wobbly-voiced nostalgists emote over wobbly electronics. The latter win, thankfully. I knew it during the piano break at the four-minute mark.
[6]
Jonathan Bogart: I’m not sure what I’m being shown here. That a Human League tribute act doesn’t sound great when run through the Miami booty bass paces? I could have told you that.
[4]
Anthony Easton: The great thing about Cut Copy is that they take the cold, formal, innovations of ’80s New Wave, and make it sound both warm and inviting. There is a skill to the tension between those synths and the vocals — a tension that few people have managed, and that they did that after thirty years of reworkings and revivals, without sticking themselves into something profoundly rhetorical or taxonomic is worth noting.
[6]
Daniel Montesinos-Donaghy: Arpeggios! Uh, pretty arpeggios! (Repeat for six minutes.)
[4]
Brad Shoup: With that truncated, looping bassline, this already sounds like an edit. I’ll have more of the wordless singing, less of the “go! go!” part, and I’m not sure how I feel about the stab-back-the-night textual part, cos there’s a slim chance they’re taking the piss.
[5]