Shall we call it a comeback?
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[7.14]
Brad Shoup: My first reaction — and this almost never happens unless I’m listening to Stooshe — was to laugh. Harvieu’s vocal isn’t really overwrought (or bad in any technical sense), but she’s swooping like a Faith Hill, and it’s that country edge that gives her vocal a karaoke quality. Of course, if I heard someone sing this at Inn Between I’d be gobsmacked. It’s an easygoing slice of Glen Campbellesque AM gold, and as I’ve just become reacquainted with the similarly confident sax counterpoint of Los Lobos’ “Angels With Dirty Faces,” I’m downgrading my mirth to a kind smile.
[7]
Iain Mew: Lives up to my expectations from last time that she would continue to at least be interesting. I hope that de-constructing Elbow’s “One Day Like This” and rebuilding it around her voice won’t be as good as she gets, though.
[6]
Jer Fairall: A lush production, a sweeping melody, a powerful set of lungs — these are all good things, no? Problem is, everything about this track is pitched on just the wrong side of too much, like a text typed out in ALL CAPS and then gone over with a yellow highlighter, leaving whatever grand passion is meant to be evoked here feeling more like smothering.
[5]
Edward Okulicz: Obviously, it’s cut from a similar cloth as other Brit-femmes, but it’s that bit more cinematic, more welcoming, more desirous and almost unbearably so. Not dusty, but Dusty; adult contemporary pop is rarely this sumptuous or haunting, let alone at the same time. Harvieu skirts the fine line between going for too much and going for enough and stays on the right side for the whole song. It even has saxophones in it without seeming even remotely out-of-place or cheesy. And despite its grand scale, the song itself is simple and not overblown in the slightest — under four minutes of music that doesn’t sound as if it wants to conquer the world but might just do it anyway. I didn’t care much for her previous single, but I find “Open Up Your Arms” so beguiling, so sultry and heartfelt that I feel completely seduced to the extent that I might now be unable to resist her voice on anything.
[9]
Jonathan Bogart: I was on the fence until the saxophone choir came in, buried just deep enough to haunt.
[8]
Alfred Soto: She’s not just opening her arms, she’s opening her voice, opening herself to the possibility of crooning to orchestral accompaniment. Unlike my colleagues I don’t hear Dusty or Dionne: they nibbled at the edges of hysteria, concealing the teeth marks. Also, at their peak they sung tunes which didn’t run out of melody or lyrics before the two-minute mark — most of their songs were under two minutes. A silver star though.
[6]
Anthony Easton: I went to the fancy room of the department store today, and looked at heavy dresses with lots of beads and spangles. Then I went to a fancy grocery store, where they played Bach and bebop cheek to jowl. I spent too much money at the fancy grocery store, but it reminded of being ten and hearing k.d. lang on the radio in my grandmother’s Buick Regal. Sophisticated, for me, is the feeling of plush velveteen in the back of a Buick Regal listening to k.d. lang in Calgary. It has been reproduced three times in one day, the 90s again and again: the room at the top of the Bay, the Loblaws at Maple Leaf Garden, and Ren Harvieu.
[9]