Plug in your synthesizers and bust out your best neon jumpsuits, it’s time for an 80s theme day!
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[6.43]
Thomas Inskeep: Perfect pop from an EDM duo: what a concept! The key isn’t Nile Rodgers, who gets his now-regular label credit for playing his patented Nile Rodgers™ chicken-scratch guitar; it’s co-writer (alongside Rodgers and the Nervo sisters) Fred Falke, who knows his way around here better than most. Getting queens of pop Kylie and Jake to duet doesn’t hurt, either, especially in service of a song as strong as this one. This sparkles like an uptempo Cyndi Lauper single did on the radio in ’84, and is pretty fucking nearly perfect.
[10]
Brad Shoup: People of the future: we recognize how neat it is that Nile Rodgers was deemed worthy of all these feature credits. He hasn’t been more anonymous than on here, though. Not that the vocalists put up much of a fight against Nervo’s thumpa.
[4]
Crystal Leww: All think pieces opining how awful EDM is for women always love to either conveniently forget about Nervo’s existence or bring up how Nervo are former models, as though that somehow invalidates their work. They team up with vocalists Kylie Minogue and Jake Shears for “The Other Boys.” Kylie sounds like her Fever-era self, which is the highest compliment I can pay a dance vocalist. Jake Shears anchors the track with his repetitive and effective plea. Nervo have been the best at using the Nile Rodgers’ guitar, taking the sound to their Fred Falke-ian maximum. The pieces here fit together so naturally that I’m surprised that no one has thought to put them together like this before. Everyone says that summer is the best for bangers, but this belongs on sweaty dance floors with kids too cool to take off their leather jackets.
[8]
David Sheffieck: Minogue and Shears sound good together and the lyric’s a fun one: simple enough to shout on a dance floor yet packed with emotion and longing. But it should be a crime to bury Rodgers in the mix as much as this does. His jittery guitar work is more moving by far than the swooshes that make up far too much of the production.
[5]
Alfred Soto: A killer lineup, and powered by Nile Rodgers’ slink guitar this track’s momentum is unstoppable. But that gears-grinding-to-a-halt screech prevalent in contemporary dance music is a heinous trend regardless of the lineup; it dilutes the four on the floor stomp, the buoyance of the vocalists (not that Jake Shears is buoyant in normal circumstances).
[5]
Scott Mildenhall: It’s a very specific problem Jake and Kylie have here, but evidently, given Giselle Rosselli’s near verbatim description of it in a song from another Australian production duo, not one unique to them. If it doesn’t ring true for you, then fear not — disco always could be as exclusive as inclusive, as Obligatory Nile will attest — and either way, this has a multitude of elements gearing it up for mass consumption: once-big names, an insistent catchphrase chorus, electrothump, electrobass, electroglide and other woolly words prefixed with and rendered powerful by “electro.” It sounds like dayglo, and the video should be set in a rollerdisco, like that Boogie Pimps one, but better.
[7]
Will Adams: Nervo’s greatest strength is their songwriting — they’ve penned more than their fair share of solid songs — which is why the shiny electro-meringue of “The Other Boys” mostly works (the other reason is the disco equivalent of The Avengers featured). But “The Other Boys” figures into a recurring problem for Nervo, and not just their terribly overdriven mixes. Their output has vacillated between uplifting EDM, club electro, straightforward dancepop and… whatever the hell this is. I appreciate what Nervo may mean for women in EDM and, more broadly, women producers, but their music is neither focused nor interesting enough for me to invest in them fully.
[6]