Sombr – 12 to 12

You’ve heard of 24/7, how about 12/3.5…

[Video]
[5.77]

Alfred Soto: Four-on-the-floor beats, massed background vocals, “Eye of the Tiger” piano plonks, and the wispiest vocal possible — it’s like the dude from Twenty One Pilots or Foster the People signing through vocoder at knifepoint. At least Brandon Flowers bellows as if from the roof of the Villagio.
[5]

Hannah Jocelyn: Welcome back, The Desired Effect! Can Sombr do more things like this and less wistfulness? This gives the last five years of nu-disco the kick in the ass it needed, even if the musician that made it answers “what’s your favorite taste?” with “her.” I didn’t like the album either, but if I may quote the ancient texts: Holy balls this song owns.
[9]

Taylor Alatorre: 12:00 AM to 12:00 PM, one presumes. The title is a coldly functional way of sneaking an “All Night” past the cliché censors, but Sombr’s diligence in this department is enabled only by his shortcut-taking laxness in others. “To me there’s no one else that could make sense to me” would be inelegant even without the redundancy, and the production is smothered by a sweaty uniformity that should have been confined to either chorus or verse, not both. “12 to 12” ends up being the perfect title for a song that spins joylessly around itself on its circular path back to the starting line, displaying little growth or progression other than the attainment of a puffed-up word count.                                                               
[1]

Katherine St. Asaph: Much of “12 to 12” sounds clever until you think about it: using slant rhymes like else/12/compelled/yourself to make lyrics sound less natural (e.g., “I am not the least compelled by anyone but yourself,” “the way you act is usual”), and the titular conceit of longing for only one lover “from 12 to 12.” To begin with the obvious: that’s only half a day. Are the remaining 12 hours for someone else? Even if you interpret the lyrics not as awkward negging but a presumably sweet “the one I fall asleep and wake up with,” midnight and noon are weird start and end points. Noon brings you well past “morning cuddling” and “cute breakfasts” to “endless commute” and “dreading my inbox.” And both cutoffs are way too early for Sombr to run on disco time (and this song very much wishes it ran on disco time). The result doesn’t come off as romantic, nor conflicted like SZA’s similar lovelife partititioning on “The Weekend,” so much as Huberman-esque micromanagement of which timeslots belong to which girls. Funk’s lite enough, though.
[5]

Iain Mew: Being reasonable, the untriggered reflexive pronoun is not a problem on the same level as the line in his last single about “the children of another man”. However, “I am not the least compelled by anyone but yourself” still made me wince, and the obsequious combination of distance and overfamiliarity follows through to the rest of the lyrics. A shame, because the echo-filled Tame Impala pop sound is a pretty effective idea.
[4]

Claire Davidson: On composition alone, “12 to 12” is a considerable step up from “Undressed,” driven by rip-roaring guitars, huge piano chords, and even a friskier new wave groove that give the track some real sonic heft. I wish Sombr didn’t insist on burying his voice in the back of the mix, because his performance is impressive, displaying enough intensity and focus to make the song’s bid for real romance after a one-night stand convincing. Still, for as bold as the song is in scale, it needs a more dramatic punctuation mark than the thinner melodic flourishes (made with what sounds like a xylophone) that arrive after the chorus. If, say, the central guitar line were really allowed to swell during these moments, “12 to 12” would be the shot of energy that contemporary hit radio doesn’t really get anymore.
[7]

Leah Isobel: Overheated and overburdened — if you’re throwing in overdriven guitar interjections and four on the floor kickdrums and plinky-plonky synth passages, you gotta at least take out one harmony line — but the bridge actually pulls off his formerly detestable “key change + suddenly vulnerable lyric” strategy, so whatever. It’s the eternal right of 20-year olds to land sideways on profundity before pratfalling into silliness.
[4]

Tim de Reuse: I do enjoy the melodrama of the over-produced, cluttered mix and the shiny piano stabbing through it all; it’s period-appropriate disco-gravitas, delivered with anguished shrieks that set up candy-sweet harmonies. I can’t help but notice, however, that in a shocking degradation from his previous work he’s made the brave choice to end every line of every verse with the same vowel (the once-conjectural “AAAAAAAA” rhyme scheme), which cuts into his tantrum of sincerity by making him sound even more like a third-grader who just found a rhyming dictionary.
[5]

Scott Mildenhall: Crunchy, punchy, looping and lithe, you would struggle to sink this song’s production, or even outshine it. Merciful Børns regen Sombr is understandably in its wake, but full marks for trying. The opening line of the chorus hits the memeable sweet spot while belieing shadier sentiments elsewhere.  
[8]

Ian Mathers: It makes total sense that Addison Rae is in the video! They’re both young and comfortable on camera and are clearly at least trying to grab some of the right pieces to make something good — and then both deploy those pieces in such generic and charmless fashion that the result is relentlessly mid.
[5]

Al Varela: I’ve been on the Sombr train for a while, but “12 to 12” convinced me to stay on board. Sombr gives his young-love whinging one hell of a groove, with nasty guitar snarls, a firm rhythm and thick enough atmosphere to make you feel the smoke and bright lights blurring your vision. He has a hell of a stage presence, whooping and hollering with his over-synthesized voice and coming off like the dark and mysterious musician you just have to learn more about. Ridiculous amount of fun.
[9]

Nortey Dowuona: This will be a [10] when it’s played live. It’s not live.
[6]

Kayla Beardslee: Hold on, the random Tik Tok indie guy is breaking out the “Don’t Start Now” piano and hitting the dancefloor? Soak it up, men, this is a rare win for you.
[7]