If funk is exuding from your bones, you may be being used to make stock…
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[5.56]
David Moore: This song has everything: Seinfeld slap bass, cartoon elephant ribcage percussion, multi-tracked falsetto approximations of exclamation points, audible pixelated firework GIFs, smeared squeals, spirit week clap ‘n’ stomp, huffs, puffs, boings, sproings, terrible rapping (blame Jacob, I think), competent rapping (thank Tank, I’m sure), time signature fuckery of the highest order, and the thorniest chord chart this side of a Steely Dan parody. What it lacks, unfortunately, is any semblance of funk, despite repeated invocations of the stuff.
[4]
Kylo Nocom: Jacob Collier, notorious for making music theory a brand, collaborates with pop’s biggest studio genius and a Tiny Desk Concert winner to release this. It’s likely to be dismissed as NPR-sanctioned Fun, a tasteful enemy to the more vulgar forms of genre-blending that populate Minecraft music festivals. And I get it! The last time we talked about something like this, everyone who liked it had to qualify themselves because nobody wants to admit to sincerely enjoying Berklee funk. So much of “In My Bones” makes me want to hate it immediately, but somehow, they deliver something great! Kimbra’s squeals and yelps counter Collier’s nerdier impulses and push the song into nerd-crush song territory, while Tank’s rapping launches the song into a higher plane of ridiculousness. That’s not to mention the fantastic rhythm section, the interpolation of “Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough,” and the ridiculous usage of “tintinnabulation.” Every possible negative description I can come up with (“the regressive children’s show indie-quirk that would’ve been fashionable in 2011,” “mistakes sound effects and showing off polyphony for actual songwriting,” “the shit that will have us suffering through more Bill Wurtz”) just sounds like something unmistakably up my alley.
[9]
Oliver Maier: Collier hits on the same problems as usual, aiming for a kind of proggy, pan-musical utopianism and instead arriving in Wackyland. His approach incorporates feats of musical theory that I have no doubt are technically brilliant and far beyond my grasp, but the effect is exhausting 1080p slapstick, desperate to entertain but without any sense of feeling, let alone a funky one. Collier includes a reference to To Pimp A Butterfly in his pitched-up rap verse alongside Tank (of the Bangas), but their main takeaway from that album seems to have been that sometimes you can rap in a really annoying voice. Kimbra is charming when she and Collier aren’t duetting Windows startup jingles.
[1]
Alfred Soto: The smug polyphony is the intention and problem: fun and/or Meghan Trainor singing 1983-era Heaven 17. The slap bass runs, massed harmonies, and disregard for melody lines might be cool to stage, I guess.
[4]
Katherine St Asaph: Like you handed a couple of kids “Sat In Your Lap,” “Can’t Stop the Feeling,” some Prince stems, a couple dozen gecs, and a defective blender, except — much like the actual Kate Bush/Prince collaboration — not as good as that sounds. When (not if) you find something in this song obnoxious, fear not; it’ll be gone in five seconds. Of course this goes for the parts you like, too, and while it’s hard to latch onto them in this cacophonous GamemasterAnthony maelstrom of an arrangement, the obnoxious parts come through just fine. Everything good — that descending riff I swear is the demo song from an old Yamaha, the crush lyrics that at least match words to whirlwind — is fleeting. And everything bad is hyper-amplified: the barrels of quirk poured into what might have been a groove, the vwoips and squeaks crowding out what might have been a throughline, and the main vocalist who wants to be Craig David but actually is soulDecision.
[4]
Nortey Dowuona: I don’t like Jacob Collier. He seems like another Robin Thicke, and I thought we learned our lesson the last time. But at least the bass and drums spin into a swirly mix that presses him against the glass, while Kimbra sinks in and gets stuck as Jacob tries and fails to find his way over to her. As I wonder how Jacob has been trapped in this expensive Tyler Perry house, I see MonoNeon and Tank chillin’ outside, Tank spitting silly rhymes quickly, before hopping in her tank to blow up the house and send Jacob and Kimbra high into the clouds. I say all this to say: as long as he doesn’t show up to the YouTube Music Awards with Rowan Blanchard twerking on him, I approve of Jacob Collier.
[8]
Katie Gill: This is exactly what Justin Timberlake wants to do but is too mainstream to actually do. “In My Bones” takes the self-referential, 1970s-flavored, falsetto-tinged skeleton of songs like “Can’t Stop This Feeling” or “The Other Side” and blasts it into its full, dancing glory, rather than keeping it neutered enough for Kidz Bop albums, end-credits dance parties, and family-friendly radio stations that only play modern music by people the color of copy paper. This is fun, weird, catchy as hell, gives off some proper funk vibes, and yet still cannot get that coveted [10] as it criminally underuses Tank Ball. Still, it’s enough of a jam that I can mostly overlook that sin.
[8]
Juana Giaimo: This is seriously one of the most annoying songs I have heard in a long time. It doesn’t have the carefree, happy feeling of funk. Instead, the lack of balance makes it sound like a ball of nerves about to explode.
[3]
Wayne Weizhen Zhang: Futuristic and atavistic, structured and unpredictable, earthbound and phantasmagorical, referential and errant, maximalist, camp, funk, chaos: I’m running out of adjectives to describe this! The percussion in this track feels like the mad machinations of a sentient robot. There are so few times as a music fan that you can genuinely say something sounds like nothing else you’ve ever heard before, but when it happens, it feels like being knocked off your feet in the best way possible.
[9]