I believe when that happens you can add something acidic to the dish to balance it out (lemon juice, vinegar, blurbs, etc.)…
[Video]
[5.15]
Hannah Jocelyn: “Feel It Still” once more, with less feeling!
[5]
Leah Isobel: This is not sexy! This is the audio equivalent of that one twig-looking Tumblr daddy dom wearing his uncle’s work shirt! This is the most desperate balding guy at the bar hitting on you! He’s never taken a sip of straight whiskey without grimacing and his hair grows out in patches! He listens to that first Fleet Foxes record alone in his apartment and cries because he never made it as a cool Brooklyn folkie when that was a viable career path! Get a real job!
[2]
Alfred Soto: I have never wanted to smell like a bonfire — that shit just happens if you’re in the woods and the rules allow you to make one — so I don’t know what this purring panderer is on about other than using verbal aikido on his lover. On the other hand, the bass line grooves. That this stew topped the American chart says something about novelty.
[5]
Joshua Minsoo Kim: Far too confident in its bassline. It’s high in the mix and clearly meant to carry the song, but it’s just kind of ugly? At first it’s manageable: the arrangement quietly blossoms so that every instrument hangs off it like a flower on a branch. And then it becomes too much: we move from one passage to the next with little care for dynamics, as if all that matters is the dun dun dun, dun dun dun.
[3]
Mark Sinker: Pretty grumpy the currently active TayTay energy field is requiring me to pay greater attention than normal to the words in a song (any attention at all): “You treat your mouth as if it’s Heaven’s Gate / The rest of you like you’re the TSA!” Old-times Hozier leant instead into a bunch of the most over-known jazz cuts as a signal-shortcut; better by far to be invoking weirdo space death-cults and oppressive govt security agencies to make yr little point — you’re hot for a rules-loving gal! proud outlaw that you utterly are! “You can sit in a barrel!’ And OK, the serenely self-absorbed clumsiness is actually the same thing either time, his narcistic unawareness the whole of this vocal, but at least this couplet has the free pass of inadvertent opacity. The Hale-Bopp don’t stop!
[4]
Taylor Alatorre: Who wrote these lyrics, the Women’s Christian Temperance Union circa 1905? Back then, the narrator of “Too Sweet” would’ve been a cautionary poster child for the domestic discord caused by excessive drink. But we’re in a post-21st Amendment world now, and the more pressing social ill at hand… is that my girl doesn’t want to party all the time. It’s such a ridiculous premise that it has an unlikely liberatory effect, freeing Hozier from his endemic dourness and letting him play as the lovable asshole, whose assholishness is thankfully of the low-stakes, take-it-or-leave-it kind. The mandatory blues-rock inflections are smoothed out to the point of being rubberized, a snub to purism that proves a suitable match for Hozier’s role as the all-too-tamable sort of danger. None of this negates the song’s fundamental slightness, but the clever-stupid “TSA” line indicates that slightness might have been what he was aiming for anyway.
[6]
Ian Mathers: I mean, obviously it’s both fine on its own (if not particularly spectacular) and also weird that this and not “Take Me to Church” is his first #1, but I’m sorry, I just can’t get over there being a hit song that finally speaks proudly for those of us that have trouble falling asleep at a so-called “civilized” hour (although honestly even 3 is a bit early, if I really had my druthers).
[6]
Harlan Talib Ockey: To be a Hozier fan is to know pain. One set of bonus tracks better than their parent album is a shame. Two is a migraine. Three starts to feel like sabotage, on some level. Is he or his label so averse to rockin’ out that his most interesting, guitar-heavy tracks are almost always relegated to B-sides? Justice for “In the Woods Somewhere”. Whither “Jackboot Jump”, which never even got a studio recording? “Too Sweet” may not have Hozier’s most intricate lyrical storytelling, but it does have a clear narrative, a strong vocal performance, and an infectious bassline. And I feel vindicated seeing one of his lost rock songs succeed, which is the important part.
[7]
Nortey Dowuona: Producer Bekon cannot be stopped. He has summoned the power of Sergiu Gherman (Garden (Say It Like Dat)), Peter Gonzales (“Leave”) and Chakra, (“Bali”). Now he has notched a number one hit. Bekon is unstoppable right now. Stop playing with his name.
[10]
Daniel Monteshenko: “Hell yeah, another smash hit!” – people making playlists for second-rate denim emporiums
[3]
Isabel Cole: Is it really so crazy to posit that a song about an unrepentant appreciation for the earthy side of earthly existence should, I don’t know, fuck a little? What’s even the point of a paean to late nights that would slot seamlessly into any coffee shop’s opening hours playlist? Where’s the hunger in this ode to appetites? Where’s the life in the call to live? And what in god’s name is that TSA line supposed to mean? I mean, I know, it’s connoting constant vigilance about what’s allowed to enter, but the phrasing calls to mind someone who insists on doing a pat-down before sex. Similarly, the grape line that appears in the final verse suggests that the titular “too sweet” is supposed to convey a certain untouched freshness, or a lack of life experience, but placing it in the chorus right after a line about black coffee sets up an implied contrast that makes the metaphor feel like it’s breaking, because, like, be serious: we all know the my-body-is-a-temple crowd has been off sugar for years.
[4]
Katherine St. Asaph: I said last month that this sounded like a Danger Mouse take on “Be My Baby,” and I stand by that! You don’t have to believe a word of this song to recognize the appeal in that.
[6]
Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: Hozier back to doing what he does best: making songs designed to soundtrack fancams of fictional vampires.
[6]