A love like this deserves mojitos…
[Video][Myspace]
[4.41]
Martin Kavka: Get a room.
[1]
Chuck Eddy: “They have a DIY attitude towards their music. They also have a wide-ranging musical taste, including top 40 hip hop…In 2009, their song ‘Daylight’ was featured in a Bacardi commercial; the band, however, insists that there are industries they will never collaborate with, such as cigarette companies.” Another reason to be glad I no longer live near Brooklyn.
[2]
Martin Skidmore: Matt’s flat, geeky vocals are very annoying, the kind of voice that makes you listen for the jokes, the parody, but there doesn’t seem to be anything like that here. Other than the percussion, it strikes me as rubbish.
[3]
Michaelangelo Matos: Like Hutch Harris with an awful case of the cutes singing over tack piano that seems to have badly misconstrued the idea of olde-time music hall. Minus the vocal, a 4.
[2]
Edward Okulicz: There’s a killer keyboard riff and an awfully accomplished hook hiding from Matt’s utterly dreadfully strained, parodically nerdy, melody-mangling singing here. That the song comes awfully close to working despite that handicap is both creditable and painfully frustrating.
[4]
Jonathan Bradley: Rinky-dink keys and a wild-eyed, fervent vocal delivery add up to one of indie-pop’s more irresistible pleasures in 2009. Matt & Kim have an unabashed enthusiasm that could easily make their amateurism seem contrived, but they attack their (really quite hummable) melodies with such earnestness that their their big-city-as-playground narratives seem anthemic and rousing. Which is apt; “Daylight” hints at a sense of freedom that genuinely is liberating, and the duo’s lack of cynicism in relation to that fact reflects a risk well worth applauding.
[8]
Mallory O’Donnell: I was predisposed to dislike this violently, and I did. Every sound being played here is good, but each is being employed in an almost medically uncomfortable manner. Also, it’s only really considered mugging when you stop doing it once and a while.
[3]
Ian Mathers: We don’t get to choose our favourites, and we certainly don’t get to decide how others feel about them; so I fully expect one of the brilliant writers here on the Jukebox will write something pithy, cutting, and at least partially true about “Daylight,” and as I read it I will wince. Because however gnomic and private the literal meaning of these words are, the confluence of sonic, emotional and experiential factors that determines how you feel about a song after you’ve listened to it dozens of times means that for me “Daylight” is the sound of figuring out that things are going to be okay; the sound of tackling your underwhelming adult life with whatever resources you can muster; the sound of how we put our lives together, piecemeal. I mean, the first time I heard “Daylight” I thought it was just a great pop song — I’m a sucker for Matt & Kim’s drums-and-keyboards-and-yelling-and-grinning approach, and I think Grand has been drastically overlooked by people this year — and certainly the skittering beat and the collision between the bright electric piano melody and the swelling organ during the chorus are/were immediately compelling to me. And given their normal scrappy, buzzy feel, the fact that “Daylight” suddenly feels widescreen, epic (or as epic as this music and these lives can manage) both delights and moves me. But whatever it lacks in literal sense, “and in the daylight anywhere feels like home” is still the heart of the song, and the heart of the feeling “Daylight” engenders in me: one not of rootlessness but of connection, of community rather than isolation (and it’s no coincidence that this song and this album are as much about Matt & Kim’s neighbourhood as anything else), of optimism breaking through aimlessness. I want to keep writing about how great this song is and what it means to me, but I’m essentially filibustering now, hoping that if this is long enough your eye will be drawn to this blurb rather than one that might be more cynical or more clearheaded, and you’ll give “Daylight” a chance. Because it deserves one.
[10]
Matt Cibula: For all its (forced) energy, this kind of defines “half-assed indie hufflepuff” for me. Either pump up the Icicle Works Beat or go full-on Bis Hyper-Active Adorable Nutter mode or borrow some fun, or something.
[3]
Iain Mew: This is somewhat akin to being cornered by someone with what, at first, appears to be a vaguely amusing anecdote, but who then just goes on and on and on over the same points until you can’t imagine why you ever cared in the first place.
[3]
John Seroff: “Daylight” is relentlessly goofy and aggressively, almost confrontationally, upbeat; it’s almost daring you not to like it. Not to worry lil’ single; your jittery, catchy charm is plenty infectious and your wackadoo crackpot grin of a music video ain’t half bad either. With positive vibrations like these, I was somewhat surprised this canned joy wasn’t fueled by a Christian ideology; punk this sunny smells straightedge. Imagine my surprise bummer when I discovered that it’s already being used to pimp rum. From sweet and happy-go-lucky to Bacardi bitch faster than you can say “Lights Out”? Not much fun in that.
[7]
Additional Scores
Andrew Casillas: [5]
John M. Cunningham: [7]
Anthony Easton: [3]
Anthony Miccio: [4]
Doug Robertson: [8]
Keane Tzong: [2]