We begin this new week with hot feature spot Monday…
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Thomas Inskeep: Now, here’s a British redhead I can get behind. Daley’s a silky-voiced R&B singer who knows how to dance across notes and rhythms with his agile voice, and he’s very smartly paired with Jill Scott here, showing restraint on her part, caressing where she could belt. This midtempo number smolders and makes me woozy with feels.
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Katherine St Asaph: The production is so sumptuous, so replete with un-timely high drama, it hardly matters how completely Daley is submerged in it. He and listener both.
[8]
Ryo Miyauchi: The lush beat is locked airtight, and the chorus is built with meticulous care like each word is a Jenga block to stack. Though it’s a rich production, it’s best to admire this from afar. Both are very much occupied, and any peep from me trying to see it through their eyes would disturb this finely polished record.
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Leah Isobel: Daley and Jill Scott’s voices are wonderful to hear swimming around in a production like this; the song is humid and groovy and delightful just to listen to, and both vocalists sound great on the gently undulating melody. But the lyrics hint at an uncertainty that doesn’t come through in the actual track. There are so many layers in the song, so many soft twinkles and enveloping strings, that the emotional content feels almost like a secondary concern. Scott’s line that she’s “been so cynical, baby” is telling — it’s already in the past, as if just willing it to go away hard enough can make it so. It makes the reassurances that the singers offer each other feel hollow. For something called “Until the Pain is Gone,” there’s not a lot of pain actually present; the story skips straight to the resolution, no stakes, no work, no guts. But it sounds so good that, at least for three minutes, I can buy into the fantasy.
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Alfred Soto: A sumptuous example of contemporary R&B untinged by nostalgia: dig the syncopation of Fender Rhodes and strings. Daley and Jill Scott dart and parry, and he’s humble enough to let her shine. “I’ve just been so cynical, baby,” she sings, and she could be referring to contemporary R&B duets.
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Micha Cavaseno: The White Guy of R&B is a phenomenon of delusion that’s hard to comprehend unless you’ve experienced it personally. Years ago, I knew this guy Nick who had no range, no songwriting chops, just a lot of popped collars and supposedly knew Donnie Klang’s manager on Facebook. But you couldn’t get this man to stop believing in himself if you tried, even if it was just to say “Hey, you need some vocal coaching”. Daley doesn’t understand how horrifically outclassed his thin voice is, especially next to Jill Scott who’s the kind of singer who bulldozes past legends in her own generation. Now, “Until the Pain is Gone” is tamely produced, and is not lyrically any more sharp or dull than the next record. There’s just no reality to the sense of smooth soul it presumes.
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Jonathan Bradley: Daley’s approach to soul follows the lead of countrymen the Style Council: tasteful, adult, and a mite stiff-jointed. There is hurt seeping from “Until the Pain is Gone,” but its lead players are reticent enough for it to ebb away so imperceptibly that there’s little chance of their reservoirs running dry any time soon. Jill Scott is no more remarkable than her host, but, to his credit, neither does he wilt before her; the most ostentatious presence here is the scatchy guitar. This partnership is one that wouldn’t be so bold as to distract from your browsing in a bookstore, but, were your attention drawn from the popular fiction to the background noise, you might discover a pleasurably innocuous reverie murmuring away.
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