Sax solos…
[Video][Website]
[3.57]
Rebecca A. Gowns: It’s a shame that Petite Meller has invested so much in her image and brand, because the music could have stood on its own. It’s just fun, simple indie pop. Then she adds all these other elements — the labored outfits, a signature font and color scheme, the music video that’s a colonial wet dream — that just confuse the issue. She even completes this video with a dedication: “Pour les filles de l’Afrique.” What the hell does that even mean?! How is your single “for the girls of Africa”?! Are you campaigning the French government for reparations towards the countries damaged by French colonial rule, or are you just using a handful of Kenyans as accessories for a few hours??? I’ll take my fun indie pop without all the messy shit, thanks.
[2]
Thomas Inskeep: A pop weirdo from the Lady Gaga school, playing with text and subtext and willfully throwing her juxtapositions in your face, only with a jazzier je ne sais quoi behind her ultra-buoyant pop.
[6]
Iain Mew: I suspect the BBC have already produced the definitive commentary on this release, if been a little on the generous side. I’ll add that the flimsy dance doesn’t do nearly enough to set up the sax solo, which should come with some kind of dire warning.
[3]
Alfred Soto: From the Supremes to Regina, a never-fail title. This one isn’t bad either, even the sax squiggle in the last third. A touch of J-pop too in the harmonies. The choir and house piano sound like they wish the Moby of 1995 could remix them.
[4]
Scott Mildenhall: Joyful dancing on the whims of an annoyingly magnetic ne’er-do-well. The lyrics are almost unintelligible free association, but that seems about the size of it, and the emphasis is on the joyful; irrepressible piano and broadening saxophone. It’s almost as if in creating it Meller undertook, as she has suggested, a Rimbaudesque derangement of the senses, compressing it into accessibility. That or just wrote a jaunty pop song anyway.
[7]
Katherine St Asaph: Like a less charming Catherine Ferroyer-Blanchard single, in bad house remix form. Except those already exist, so this is doubly pointless.
[3]
Micha Cavaseno: If the celebration of love is supposed to sound like someone who can’t sing over the worst house cliches as a mix of Red Bull backwash and plaque, with a corny-ass Springsteen-style sax solo, then I intend to live in a realm of despair for the rest of my days. Because I love myself more than that.
[0]