In which we love liking, but not loving, “Love Not Loving You”…
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Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: “Love Not Loving You” is frantic and too much and kind of perfect. The busy instrumental covers for a relatively boring melody, with mixed success: the synth riffing and Chic-style guitar is more distracting than redeeming, but the clanging percussion and driving bassline serve as the necessary counterpoint to Foxes herself. It’s in her vocal performance that the chaos of “Love Not Loving You” finds its internal logic. It’s a thin lyric, but she sells its joy and wistfulness with confidence. Through her, the song’s scramble for a hook is recast as desperate post-breakup exultation, a potent motive force.
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Tobi Tella: Strangely more ’90s hip-hop than tumblrcore as expected, it’s one of the most immediate things I’ve heard from her and yet it feels less than its individual parts. Honestly, I think it’s the lyric; committing to fun pop and making it catchier or diving deeper into descriptive and lyrical writing would have made it more palatable.
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Leah Isobel: “Love Not Loving You” is pure nervous energy. The chord progression is uneasy, sidestepping in and out of a major key as it builds; the production accentuates a galloping pace with “Lucky Star” sparkles and pots and pans nicked from SOPHIE’s kitchen. On this shifting sonic ground, trapped between the past and present, Foxes delivers a breathless melody that renders the line “Came to me in a dream/I guess I’m the love of my life” less like an epiphany and more like a panic attack. Is it a little messy? Yeah, but so is existing. This chaotic quality makes it more effective when the chorus flips the equation, channeling her ambivalence into the lyrics and letting the brassy hook carry all of her confidence.
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Will Adams: The crowded lite-funk arrangement recalls earlier Kimbra, but Foxes’ vocal lacks the oomph to keep from getting lost in it.
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Alfred Soto: Enough squiggles, plastic funk rifflets, and clapping beats to give the second-tier tracks on Dua Lipa’s Future Nostalgia a fright. But her so-so voice allows them a sigh of relief.
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Joshua Minsoo Kim: We’re getting the literal kitchen sink here: these are pots and pans clanging all over the mix, and their rowdiness announces the aching that underlines moving on from an ex. “Love Not Loving You” is an invitation to dance away the heartbreak, but also a reminder that it won’t be the smoothest. While Louisa Rose Allen’s singing isn’t the most exhilarating, her straightforward vocal performance reminds you that it’s often just music that’ll get you through the pain.
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Kayla Beardslee: Foxes’ collaborators take the kitchen sink approach to production — and by “kitchen sink” I mean they must have grabbed some just-washed pots and pans and brought them to the studio — but it’s nice to hear Foxes take a step back towards the idiosyncratic production of 2014’s Glorious, in a way that also integrates the more straightforward synthpop inclinations of 2016’s All I Need. And after four whole years, it’s just nice to hear Foxes, period: the song is exuberant, and her vocals are as desperate yet confident as ever.
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William John: “First album Ronika” probably wasn’t the direction I had predicted Foxes to take up, but I’m not mad about it.
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Thomas Inskeep: This is so “Shake Your Love 2020″ it’s nuts — with a soupçon of late ’80s New Order, too. There is absolutely nothing here not to like.
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Katherine St Asaph: Imagine “I Wanna Dance With Somebody,” except every year after its release, someone tweaks the track to sound newer and hipper, or re-tweaks the track left by the last person. Imagine the audio passed from format to format, from CD to wav to RealAudio to mp3 to Spotify, leaking fidelity with each sieve. Somewhere in the chain they lost Whitney’s part and brought in another singer to recreate it, as you do. You’ll have something much like this. And you’ll probably want to listen to “I Wanna Dance With Somebody” instead.
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