Ida LaFontaine – Go Again

“The chorus kicked in and utterly distracted me”

Tim: Do you really know where we’re going, Tom? Do you really care where it ends? Because Ida doesn’t, and to be honest this song kind of makes me want to agree with her.

Tom: Ah, we’ve finally come full circle: a lyric video that actually just features the artist singing the son– oh. Sorry, the chorus kicked in and utterly distracted me there.

Tim: I’m not surprised, because what a song, or at the very least what a chorus. It’s not much of a dance track – starts out more as a vibrant country number, really – but that first chorus got my hands involuntarily slapping the desk, and then when the song returned for the closing section, BAM my head started moving and I DID NOT WANT TO STOP.

Tom: Are you sure that’s not just caffeine? Because it’s not a bad chorus, but it’s not that good, surely?

Tim: Well, I pushed play again, and not long after my hands were clapping and it was all I could do not to jump around the room.

Tom: Let me put it this way: if this were a Eurovision track, and we were back in the stadium, I’d be dancing like crazy to it. In a club, yes, I can see how it works. But it’s still got a lot of slow bits in there, and sitting in my desk — it didn’t quite make it. Nearly did on that last chorus. But not quite.

Tim: Am I just in a very excitable mood? Perhaps. But is this a great track regardless of that? Definitely.

Snakehips ft. Tinashe & Chance The Rapper – All My Friends

“That is a really good chorus”

Tim: It’s a common occurrence – you’re not paying much attention to the radio, but you hear a song and think ‘this is great’, so you Shazam it to check it out later, and then you realise with a sigh of disappointment that it was actually just a really good chorus.

Tim: So, let’s be fair, that is a really good chorus – certainly quite an attention grabbing one, especially if you pay a bit more attention and see that’s a song basically bemoaning the constant presence of alcohol and drugs on a night out.

Tom: Yep, spot on. The base instrumental in the verses isn’t bad either.

Tim: The rest of it, though? Well, I’ll take it or leave it.

Tom: Despite our general dislike for rap bits, I’ve got to admit I quite like the flow that Chance has there: it’s smart and it’s complex, and it doesn’t sound like every other interchangable middle-eight rapper out there. Weird, weird censorship though — an obnoxious bleep for “xan”, a drug reference to Xanax, but uncensored n-bombs a few lines later. How very strange. Take it or leave it, maybe, but I’ll take most of this. You?

Tim: Probably leave it, though I won’t complain if it comes on again.

Medina – We Survive

“It’s competent, it’s danceable.”

Tim: Notable Dane Medina is back after a couple of years away, with the lead and title track off her sixth album (and her third English one), out next month, so feast your ears on this.

Tim: Fairly decent helping of electropop, I’d say – how’s it for you?

Tom: Are we just in the middle of a January of mediocre songs, Tim, or am I just in one of those funks where everything sounds “meh”?

Tim: Hmm, possibly the standard mid-winter blues? Mind you, I say ‘fairly decent’ – beyond that, there’s not a huge amount to say about it, really.

Tom: Right: it’s competent, it’s danceable. I know I’ve got high standards — I’m hoping for every song to be a Blank Space, and statistically that’s just not going to happen. This is good. It’s… it’s nice.

Tim: Yeah – strong beat, good vocal, great production; I’d play it at a party and would dance to it at a club, and that’s all I need from a track like this, really. Nice work.

Darin – Lagom

“A lovely number to start your week.”

Tim: Latest track to come from his Swedish album Fjärilar i Magen, and it’s a lovely number to start your week.

Tim: You see? Lovely, and we have another track where, once again, I must face up to the fact that I’m basically useless at getting anything that requires effort done if it isn’t absolutely necessary, as I still haven’t got anywhere learning Swedish and I’d love to know what this is all about.

Tom: To be fair, I think “learning an entire new language” is a pretty high bar to clear. to make it worse, my brain is convinced that pre-chorus is actually just English played backwards: there’s something weird about the cadence that reminds me of backmasking. It’s probably just autotune.

Tim: Really? It’s sounds fine to me, but in any case Google Translate isn’t particularly legible, and even the title seems off – apparently Lagom means Moderate, but that’s a really weird name for a song. However, so what if we can’t judge the lyrics – everything else is there to be heard, and bloody marvellous it really is.

Tom: Hmm, I wouldn’t agree. I thought “ah, that’s the final chorus” at about two minutes in, and then was surprised when I realised we hadn’t even hit the middle eight yet. It just seems to drag — which is strange for something that’s so upbeat. What works for you?

Tim: Well, we’ve got on point vocals, top strumming action that’s busy and accompanied enough to not be annoying, with some great strings coming along in the back – all in all, top tune.

Saturday Flashback: Yelle – Que Veux-tu (Madeon Remix)

“That’s just dangerous.”

Tim: Yelle, a French band we’ve covered before; this track, from 2011 which in its original version is a bit shouty and unpleasant. Madeon, the producer who had a go at this before he got famous, so probably when he was about 12 or something.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EyARHscb8mU

Tom: Oh hey, that sounds exactly like what I’d expect from Madeon. (Which, given it’s an early track from him, perhaps isn’t surprising.) Rapid-fire samples running into a solid dance remix.

Tim: I found it via a suggested playlist entitled “Run Far, Run Fast” on a streaming service; it’s good, isn’t it? Keeps the chorus from the original along with binning off the spoken and irritating verses, and sticks a quick genre-shift almost in a funk direction.

Lovely all round, and the video on top’s just a bonus, really. If I ever do start start running again: it’s right there with me.

Tom: Although I wouldn’t recommend doing that massive jump down a 45-degree hill. That’s just dangerous.

Tim: HAH! I LAUGH in the face of…actually, yeah, you’re probably right.

Alan Walker – Faded

“It’s like 2010 got some slightly updated synths.”

Tim: Norwegian producer Alan had a bit of success about eighteen months ago with Fade, an instrumental dance track; now he’s gone and done an Avicii on it, presumably hoping for similar levels of success.

Tim: And I do like that a lot, actually.

Tom: Crikey, it’s like 2010 got some slightly updated synths. I’m not sure whether that’s an insult or not, though, because it’s really quite listenable.

Tim: I agree – very listenable indeed. It appears to be tricky, adding vocals onto a track that was originally designed as an instrumental – the places you’d put the attention-seeking chorus are the ones where you’ve already got the attention-seeking main dance melody. Like Bromance, though, a very good compromise seems to have been made, and this works really, really well.

Tom: I’m not a fan of the compression that’s on there as they try to fit everything in: there’s some weird volume-fading going on that’s unfamiliar enough to my ears to sound like error rather than deliberate choice. That said, it might just be coming into fashion and I haven’t heard it enough: that’s what I thought about dubstep.

Tim: Ah, dubstep.

Tom: Huh. What happened to dubstep? I remember it being The New Thing We Didn’t Like, and then it was The Current Thing We Enjoy Now, and now it’s The Old Thing We’re Not Using Any More.

Tim: Oh, I’m sure something equally divisive will come along soon enough. Back to this, though, and weirdly the quiet piano line bits on this remind of me exactly the same song that Bromance reminded you of – Lisa Miskovsky’s Still Alive. Whether that’s coincidence, deliberate theft or possibly even homage I don’t know, but I do know that the more I hear it, the more I love this track, and here’s hoping he does succeed.

KITTY – Reach No Higher

“I really wish it didn’t take quite so long to happen.”

Tim: Family and friends know her as Kitty, the rest of the world knows her as KITTY, and she’s Swedish with this as her debut.

Tim: Now, here’s a thing. First off, it takes a long time to get going, with verses that, along with the middle eight, I’ll generously describe as existent.

Tom: I rather like that middle eight: it’s a brave choice to go with just simple instrumentation, let alone just a string section — but I think it works extremely well, and possibly better than that chorus.

Tim: Really? See, for me its the chorus that totally makes it, or at least it sort of does – for me it’s not until the second chorus when it all goes orange that it actually does anything.

Tom: You’re right, that’s the cue: for some reason, it comes together there.

Tim: I don’t quite know how this is possible – the two are identical – but throughout that extended chorus and towards the end of the song, it all just rolls along beautifully, and I have no complaints at all (except for that double negative). I love them, in fact – I just really wish it didn’t take quite so long to happen.

Tom: And at four minutes it doesn’t really need to: you could cut out the first minute or so and it’d work fine.

Tim: There is a remix, mind – after all, there’s always a remix – by Swedish producer mog, that fixes that and gets it going straight off; sadly, in doing so it completely loses the lovely flowingness that makes the later choruses of the original so great. Oh, maybe I’m destined to be unhappy.

Tom: Maybe you’re just starting to approach my position: that 90% of the music we get is just “okay”, and that’s fine.

Steele – Machine

“Somehow less than the sum of its parts.”

Tom: Well that’s an ungooglable name. It’s just going to show you steel machines.

Tim: Indeed, so hopefully I can give you the info you need: a new-ish Swedish act, and the track’s described as “a bitter sweet song about recalled memories and heartbreak”. Quick but obvious f-bomb in the middle, so proceed as appropriate.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FzUcR6jA0CU

Tim: Decidedly more bitter than sweet, that – I’d struggle to find any sweetness in there at all, really, aside from the (mildly believable) “I’m a laugh machine” lyrics. Interesting collection of machines to be, actually – as well as laugh, we’ve love, that and soul (though the tone of it kind of makes me want to add a -draining to that last one), all of which gives a rather curious insight into the relationship being discussed.

Tom: There are so many good things here. Absolutely cracking intro. Brilliant suddenly rising chords in the chorus. That middle eight is lovely. The vocal performance is excellent. Even the ending — which I initially thought was going to be a massive letdown — is recovered by a bit of synth twiddling. And yet, I don’t actually like the final product: it’s somehow less than the sum of its parts for me.

Tim: I’m feeling the same – in two minds about it, really. It’s obviously incredibly depressing and downbeat, but the production on it is really very good indeed, and I’ve happily pressed replay several times while listening. Hmm.

Tom: I want the instrumental of this, used as the backdrop to some nature documentary. I’m just not sure it’s a decent song on its own.

John De Sohn feat. Sigrid Bernson – Happy Hours

“That got unexpectedly confessional.”

Tim: Big new tune for you from dance producer John, with vocals supplied by, erm, one the dancers on Swedish Strictly.

Tim: “Why wait for the happy ending, when all you need is the happy hours?” An attitude, I suspect, that most people have but would be less than happy to admit to – sod the future, so what if it doesn’t work out for the best, let’s just enjoy right now. That was, in fact, pretty much the attitude that got me through university, and much as my dad keeps telling me not to, basically how I’m currently going with any sort of career.

Tom: Wow. That got unexpectedly confessional.

Tim: It did, didn’t it? Let’s move on, because on top of that: what a banging tune, no?

Tom: The pitch-twisted vocals certainly made me sit up and listen. Big drums, big production — that first build promised a lot, and it even managed to deliver. I’m not sure that chorus, despite the truths it apparently reveals, it quite as good or clever as it wants to be — and even at 3:36 it overstays its welcome a bit.

Tim: I particularly like the big bells that are all over the place, and the vocal layered on top of itself so that by the end we’re almost in Icona Pop territory – I LOVE IT.

Tom: Tighten it up a bit, go somewhere interesting with that middle eight, and you’d have a truly great track.

Taylor Swift – Out of the Woods

“The best track (don’t argue, it is)”

Tom: So the record label’s finally got around to making the best track (don’t argue, it is) from 1989 a single, and the big-budget music video has just been released.

Tim: I won’t argue, but I will give a quick context note: this is another that is generally believed to be about her and Harry Styles; she’s not denied that, but said the relevant relationship was had “anxiety coursing through it” due to “every single person in the media thinking they could draw up the narrative of what we were going through”. So, probably.

Tom: Shot in New Zealand, like Lord of the Rings. Ridiculous budget, like Lord of the Rings. Impressive CGI, like Lord of the Rings. No coherent plot, like… well, never mind.

Tim: Binning off the snark for a moment (sorry): beautiful looking, like, yeah.

Tom: But here’s my point: 1989 is an album from 2014. It’s 15 months old. And new video releases still get massive publicity, millions of views in the first day, and — crucially — this isn’t an album track. This could have been the lead single. 1989 really is a spectacular album.

Tim: It is, and it’s no surprise that this was the initial promo track for the album. The chorus alone sums it up, and your attitude to the song will likely rest solely on that: high speed, high intensity, hefty on the shove-it-down-your-throat message. If you like the chorus, you’ll like the song. If you don’t like the chorus, there’s something wrong with you.