Spoilers: This will not be the last bad band name we encounter this week…
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[4.09]
Katie Gill: Points are automatically docked for this all-male band calling themselves The Amazons. More than anything else, I’m getting vibes of the Strokes. Partly because of the sound, partly because I encountered “Reptilia” in such a specific context that I can totally see myself encountering the Amazons in: one of the first songs in Guitar Band that you get stuck on and find yourself growing to like, simply because you’ve heard it over and over again, as the decent song Stockholm Syndromes you into thinking it’s pretty great.
[6]
Alfred Soto: Bet they’re grateful they stumbled on that seven-note guitar figure: it makes their Bono-fronting-the-Walkmans shtick easier to accept. No need to spell out the “there” in “I’ll take you ____” either.
[4]
A.J. Cohn: This track, while likely intended to sound appealingly brooding, is really just dreary — from its gloomy, heavy-handed production to its tiresomely creepy lyrics. In a world better than ours, a hot new act called The Amazons would be a band of feminist punks, not a bunch of boring bros.
[3]
Anthony Easton: That little surf bit around 2:06, when the vocals drop out, is grungey enough to be more interesting than anything else here.
[5]
Juana Giaimo: “Little Something” aims at a crescendo, and although there is indeed a explosion, it still lacks energy because it doesn’t offer nothing new — the guitars only get noisier and the voice raspier.
[5]
Josh Langhoff: The singer glowers, imagining he’s Robert Mitchum; the rhythm section commits to playing every beat stiffer than the one before. Remember when Kings of Leon used to place in year-end critics’ polls? These guys are just as inexplicable.
[2]
Thomas Inskeep: I guess this is supposed to hold over Muse fans until the next Muse record.
[2]
Megan Harrington: More grist for the rock is dead mill. The Amazons have no new ideas and no good old ideas, either. “Little Something” is rote, mindless, and adrift.
[3]
Micha Cavaseno: An inherent tragedy of the modern rock band is that whereas Rock was the dominant cultural force, it is now inept. The Amazons aren’t inept, they’re solid as hell, and “Little Something” is, while pretty much lyrically redundant, a good midway point sonically between Failure, Queens of the Stone Age and Kings of Leon that shows they’re trying hard. If this were a decade and change ago, The Amazons would be a bright hope! But the fact is, 2017 is driving past and refusing to pick these kids up out of the rain as they stick out their thumbs. Rock feels more and more like old model cars: aesthetically curious and novel, because of their divorce from the modern age, but unable to properly thrive. You can’t make a hybrid or electric model of a car that was around from before your parents were born, there’s a failure to adapt to the concerns and the needs of the now that makes it actually quite frivolous, and that’s what undermines The Amazons and so many rock bands. Can you make a band feel useful, special and vital based not on its opposition to whatever’s going on now, but in how you address what’s going on now?
[3]
Ramzi Awn: The Amazons manage not to wear out their welcome on this uncomplicated single. The levels are on point, and the howling breakdown has you rooting for them by the end. Featuring a commendable vocal performance, “Little Something” succeeds in blending nuance with bravado.
[6]
Mo Kim: Past the second chorus, there’s a neat bit where the thunder clouds of reverb-soaked guitar and wailing vocals lift, revealing a sparse radio-ready riff backed by martial rhythms. The production keeps listeners at arm’s length, the effect not unlike watching the flickering lights of a packed stadium through the rainy windshield of a beat-up Ford; with each repetition of the hook, though, the colors loom larger until they swallow us whole again in all their harsh noise. The rest of “Little Something” is a mild lark, but if The Amazons aren’t exactly painting with new shades of grey they are at least reinvigorating familiar ones with a shot of adrenaline: that’s a little something to appreciate.
[6]