Because we’re never not covering people out of Ladytron…
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[7.12]
Katherine St Asaph: Helen Marnie singing like icicles shattering over a Daniel Hunt tundra: ignore the credit, this is a Ladytron single, and those will never not be good. (My gut insists the Reuben Wu / Mira Aroyo counterpart would be better, though; maybe because the Mira songs on Velocifero were the best, the grittiest; maybe because I prefer underdog vocalists, or maybe just because I look more like her.) The verses say less than they think (“a heart explodes every second on the street” is a fantastic opener, but I’m not sure anyone decided how literal it was) — but that was always part of the Ladytron sell, and it hardly matters when the first chorus is a blend of “Weekend” and Patrick Wolf’s “Together” and the second is the sort of wistful epitaph that makes you think, while it lasts, that Marnie’s voice and sequencers were invented for. Extra point for the vocal and guitar sighs.
[9]
Edward Okulicz: Of course chilly synth-pop with Marnie’s vocals is going to be good — you people have heard Witching Hour, haven’t you? “The Hunter” is as frosty and wind-swept as anything off that record, and it’s only the more interpersonal lyrics (“dry your eyes, friend”) that give it the sheen, the impression of additional warmth. Underneath that veneer of tenderness, Daniel Hunt’s production is an endlessly-stretching, magnificent abyss.
[8]
Alfred Soto: Tuneful and undistinguished, Ladytron remind me of twentysomething nights in so-called indie clubs. Almost as tuneful and undistinguished, this single by their songwriter is the electronic equivalent of the tuneful, undistinguished things that her mom’s generation would have enjoyed played on acoustic guitars.
[4]
Ian Mathers: If you told me I’d like Ladytron less if they started emulating the high-gloss wing of synthpop more, I’d have looked a little askance at you. This is half of Ladytron, admittedly, and Marnie’s voice does go fairly well with the weightless, pristine production. But personally I prefer that voice working slightly against the grain of the music (as on Witching Hour, where they tapped into a bit of shoegaze), and here the result doesn’t feel ethereal so much as it does remote, harmless, something you can’t quite reach or be reached by. Sounds pleasant enough, though.
[6]
Madeleine Lee: It seems too obvious to call this Ladytron defrosted, but the warmth here is palpable, beyond even the relatively human Gravity the Seducer. It’s there in the lyrics, which shift away from the external (describing you, directing you) to the internal (describing me, asking you); it’s there in the instrumentation, as the guitar gradually cracks through the layers of synths until it washes over the last refrain. The production is still wall-to-wall, but the walls are there to keep you in, not out.
[9]
Iain Mew: In the verses, Marnie never quite makes it clear whether she is playing the hunted and the hunter as two different characters or one conflicted one. The song has a cold, inexorable momentum that makes the goodbye inevitable, though, and by the chorus it’s all hunter. Going back to the verses, though, “oceans of empathy” is a neat self description. She knows what she has to do, but she sounds like she’s both convincing herself and trying to make it as easy as possible for the other party.
[8]
Brad Shoup: Marnie swoops to the waters and hovers for a while. She’s got an unaffected, conversational tone; the pitch included “pristine vocals,” but what’s here is quite affecting. But the framework is so standard: the sketch of drama, but no sound-pictures like that initial descent.
[6]
John Seroff: Not to be too glib about a track that I actually enjoy, but it’s 35 years later and the only thing disco is doing different is slightly slowing down “From Here to Eternity“? File under: If It Ain’t Broke, Don’t Fix It.
[7]