“Western space grunge” in the Hot 100…
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Claire Davidson: The first verse of “Freakin’ Out” could lead one to believe the song is a particularly fatalistic emo ballad, with little more than spare guitar plucking soundtracking lead singer James Tuffs’s frayed delivery, his vocals audibly strained as he agonizingly stretches the syllables of his amorphous descriptions of anxiety. After the first chorus ends, though, the song becomes a different kind of dirge, the emergence of jagged guitar riffs in the mix providing a bit of sonic heft but little in the way of dynamism or cathartic energy. Given the song’s more abstract approach to discussing the physical sensations that accompany its strain of bleary-eyed, exhausted mental illness, one would think Dexter and the Moonrocks would embrace some sort of dramatic crescendo in embodying these feelings, whether it be through a more rousing, anthemic chorus, or even just an extended guitar solo. The stagnancy the song ultimately develops may be indicative of how James Tuffs personally experiences the cyclical nature of his struggles, but it doesn’t exactly make for a visceral retelling.
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Edward Okulicz: This jumps from EMO BALLAD to EMO SCREAMER so abruptly that I find it distracting; nothing about the actual melody or lyrics benefits from this shift. Maybe it was on someone’s bingo card. I like the first half better.
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Jel Bugle: Do we need neo-Nickelback emo? The kids probably dig it, I didn’t mind it! YouTube comments made me laugh, and now I can’t unhear this as a real binmen anthem.
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Katherine St. Asaph: Answers the question “what if Scott Stapp learned to sing like Taylor Swift?”.
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Iain Mew: The gloomy brooding isn’t quite specific enough for how long they spend on it, but when the guitars and drums kick in its with an unexpected and welcome crunch that sustains the rest of the song no problem. If they arent exactly bringing rock music into the charts with something brand new, they are at least doing it with something Brand New.
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Ian Mathers: I have recently been relistening to Pablo Honey (Radiohead’s first record, ‘the one with “Creep” on it’) (don’t ask) (‘s good though) and I am more than a little nonplussed to find that this act I’d never heard of before sounds like they have been doing the same thing. It could be worse, they could have sounded like they’d been listening to Muse.
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