It’s either the nicest prison, or the most fascist gym.
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[5.44]
Jonathan Bogart: “David Guetta has a folksinger on his songs? I’ll show him! I’ll put TWO folksingers on mine!”
[4]
Jer Fairall: Limited in vocal range but occasionally smart with a tune, the Quin sisters’ best album, 2004’s So Jealous, worked so well because either they or their collaborators realized that their voices could really do little beyond straining against the material, meaning that the punky and very mid-00’s indie-pop of the record was heavy on the sharp, melodic buzz and light on moments of grace or nuance. Tepid, tasteful electro-pop is exactly the wrong setting for them.
[4]
Iain Mew: Pulse working overtime, feeling bodies, bright lights — the best parts of “Body Work” are the flashes of sensory intensity. Tegan and Sara convey them with a suitable excitement tempered by the hesitation of the rest of the lyrics. The only thing holding the song back is the unremarkable synth-pop that adds a dull gauze over it all.
[6]
Colin Small: This song is so derivative I can’t even figure out what it’s biting.
[3]
Will Adams: Morgan Page has a knack for emotive electro, but he also has a tendency to process his guests’ vocals to robotic proportions. “Body Work” is no exception; Morgan takes Tegan and Sara’s endearing quirks and hypercompresses, multi-tracks and microedits them to the point where a sobering line like “I get shy in these lights” makes zero impact. To Tiesto’s credit, he gave the duo more room to emote even while simultaneously providing whomping trance beats. “Body Work”, on the other hand, power walks instead of sprints.
[5]
Anthony Easton: “Body work,” two words that up to this point had been stuck in the mental drawer with Kristeva and Butler, has been returned to its proper, original place — in the queer disco. The sound has memories of that magical space in the ’70s where lesbian folk moved ever closer to said disco. (For comparable vice, track down Heather Bishop’s “I Love Women.”)
[9]
Brad Shoup: The aural equivalent of making waves with your hand out a moving car. It’s got eminent replay value: maybe due to the knocking 2 and 4, or the charmingly deferential text. “Can I make all the moves I’m making tonight/Without hurting you bad,” they ask, which sounds more like an inquisition into boundaries than a private scheme.
[9]
Katherine St Asaph: “Can I make all the moves I’m making tonight without hurting your back?” may be the sexiest line of 2012. Shame it’s obscured by Page’s secondhand Calvin Harris fog, every endearing vocal bit like “I get shy in these lights” — accomplishing what Ellie Goulding never quite does — weakened by the stylistic mismatch. This must be what those Guetta and Flo Rida songs feel like for Sia fans.
[6]
Alfred Soto: The pipsqueak vocals and recherché beats deserve each other so thoroughly that it must have been planned.
[3]