Flo x Kaytranada – The Mood

A vibe, if you will…

[Video]
[5.75]

Julian Axelrod: Flo and Kaytranada are two of our finest purveyors of lightly simmering synth jams that you can flirt to but can’t actually fuck to, so it’s only right that their first collaboration is a midtempo semi-banger about being too tired for sex. If this had an explosive pop payoff, it would be a better song but less effective messaging.
[6]

Claire Davidson: On the opening verse of “The Mood,” Jorja sounds so confident in negotiating her demands that I was expecting the song to be a fairly standard list of performance requirements for Flo’s prospective bedroom partners. What we get is more surprising, an ode to enthusiastic consent that sees the members of the group acknowledge their love interest’s sexual prowess, while still emphasizing that the women themselves have to be in the right mindset to make the most of the experience. There’s definitely a place for this sentiment in R&B, but Kaytranda doesn’t quite seem to know how to make room for it, attempting to strike a balance between sultry intimacy and anthemic authority that ends up compromising both approaches. Indeed, “The Mood” feels surprisingly busy for a subverted sex jam: all three members sound effortless in their vocal runs, but these takes are so frantically cluttered within the mix that they make Flo sound desperate to be done with sex altogether, hardly the intended outcome of a song like this.
[5]

Nortey Dowuona: Stella, Jorja, and Renee did their thing with the harmonies, especially in the second verse leading into the pre-chorus. Big shout to MNEK on the vocal production.
[7]

Harlan Talib Ockey: In theory, this has the elements of a good Flo song: great harmonies, as few clunky lyrics as possible — but the production is so static, “The Mood” feels like it never hits its groove. Apart from the pre-chorus(/bridge?), it all blends into one long sequence of verses.
[5]

Andrew Karpan: A surprisingly anonymous-sounding pop record with a nevertheless nuanced message; which is to say, a song that is moving but fails, largely to move.  
[4]

Katherine St. Asaph: Sex-and-communication-posi R&B that avoids being didactic largely due to, uh, mood. All this needs is a guest verse with a “raincheck” bar.
[7]

Dave Moore: Flo rarely miss with millennial R&B pastiche and Kaytranada rarely misses, period, so this should be a match made in heaven — and it is, in the sense of two heavenly artists being selected kind of randomly. But maybe Mother Teresa and St. Augustine just don’t have chemistry, y’know? 
[7]

Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: “Sensual R&B about how you actually don’t really want to have sex right now” is not inherently a comedic concept, but the lyrical execution here does not rise above the level of a SNL digital short. As a longtime Kaytranada stockholder (The Aminé collab album was great! The one from last year was an hour of perfectly serviceable filler!) this beat does not improve the situation; I’m wondering if there’s a warehouse in Plateau-Mont-Royal with rows of twenty-something Quebecois making “GLOWED UP”-alikes.
[5]