-diocrity…
[Video]
[4.83]
Will Adams: Diplo continues to be more tolerable as a faceless house producer than in most of his other five thousand projects, but even this is flimsy. He and Paul Woolford keep the piano pump at a bare simmer, while Kareen Lomax, whose solo work is far more interesting than this suggests, has her vocal processed to mush and set adrift an underwritten topline.
[5]
Thomas Inskeep: This feels like a sketch, a demo, something being worked on in the studio — not a finished product. It’s got the basic (very basic) bones of an average 2020 UK house track, but nothing’s on ’em. Even Lomax sounds like a scratch vocal.
[4]
Brad Shoup: I think it’s to the producers’ credit that they don’t aggressively cast Lomax’s pitch into either direction, but maybe I’m still thinking the traps of five years ago are today’s. She sounds great, shuddering the I in “I heard you been looking for me”: a great, ambiguous line for a club track. But there’s no space in this place for her grand reveal, just a sunblind house production with a couple spangles from 30 years ago.
[5]
Tobi Tella: Trying to bring back house, lands more at apartment. It’s 2020 and slight lyric chopping and faux-soulful vocals can’t make your song interesting.
[3]
Juana Giaimo: Well, I guess their aim is to make another hit like this — it worked once, but I hope it doesn’t work twice. Kareen Lomax’s voice really captures Tracy Chapman’s way of singing — slightly trembling, her cadence like a soft cascade — but for that same reason lacks personality, especially when compared to her own songs.
[5]
Scott Mildenhall: A vast, spacious panorama of regret and redemption where all reverberates, right down to the chinks of ache in Kareen Lomax’s vocalisation. The picture is painted masterfully, yet structurally something is missing. They’re gazing towards enormity, but not finding much to say about it.
[7]