Hot Shade feat. Nomi Bontegard – Creatures

“Apparent pan pipe enthusiast”

Tim: Hot Shade, Swedish producer and apparent pan pipe enthusiast. Nomi Bontegard, similarly Swedish singer whose instrumental preferences are currently unknown.

Tom: All the way through the intro and first verse, I was thinking: this is good, I hope the chorus lives up to it. And then. And then.

Tim: It took me a while to work out exactly what it was about that I really liked, and then it hit me: it’s Alan Walker.

Tom: I… huh? How? I’m not sure Alan Walker ever sounded like he came from South America.

Tim: Those staccato notes underneath the early parts of her verses are straight out of his playbook, and in the second part of them when everything steps up a notch, I’m wondering how it took me so long to realise.

Tom: That’s fair, and that’s probably why I like the verses so much. It’s a good style to take inspiration from.

Tim: As with all of his songs, I think this is great – the pan pipes are a bit weird, but I think that’s only because no-one’s ever thought to use them before…but they seem to just work. Work nicely, in fact.

Tom: I cannot overstate how wrong you are.

Saturday Flashback: Måns Zelmerlöw – Hope & Glory

Tim: Item two in the current collection of “oh, I forgot all about this one”: Måns’s entry for Melodifestivalen 2009. Topped the final with the juries but only came fifth with the voters, leaving to a final fourth place.

Tom: Okay, just take a moment here, because I want to talk about a technical thing that speaks of the professionalism of both Måns and the production crew. The second shot: the one that cuts straight to his finger. It looks really simple, but that’s a perfectly framed and focused shot. That means Måns had to hit his mark exactly, raised his finger to the planned position exactly, and then the camera op had to make any final adjustments in under a second so the director could cut to it.

That one shot sums up Melodifestivalen’s tech for me: they didn’t need to do that, barely anyone will have cared about it, but artistically they wanted to so they made it happen.

Tim: Yeah – and that is, genuinely, one of my favourite things about Melodifestivalen, and frequently Eurovision as well – the creativity and expertise with the camerawork, like the other example we had last month, with dancers coming out of nowhere. It’s something you rarely get anywhere else, yet it’s such an art form.

ANYWAY. The song.

Now I don’t want to say it was the outfit that killed it, but I will say that while I think the song’s fantastic, and the backing graphics are good as well, there’s no way I’d pick up the phone for someone wearing that jacket/shirt/bow tie combination. Too harsh? I don’t know, but like I said, I do think that song’s brilliant.

Tom: Really? It almost sounds off-key during the verses. I don’t think that’s accidental, because Måns has proved that he can reliably hit live notes; I think that’s down to the composition. I’ll grant you that’s a decent chorus and a fantastic middle eight, though.

Tim: Right – and indeed that part right after the middle eight, though it’s funny: it uses almost the exact same trick that Cara Mia did two years previously of going slightly euphoric, albeit a tad less enthusiastically. It works well here just as well, but it could be argued that maybe it got some people being less impressed? I don’t know – almost a decade on it’s hard to know anything, except simply that this is a damn good track.

Berislav – I Gave My Life

Tim: “Duran Duran meets Game of Thrones” says the subject line of the PR email for this Croatian guy’s track, and apparently, this song’s “the first part of a trilogy, the beginning of a dramatic journey, the clash between life and death.” Standard overblown guff, you might think, once you throw in the “utterly unique” and “tour de force”, and, well, have a listen.

Tim: It reminds me of the brief trend in the mid-noughties for sticking dance music on top of orchestral backing, largely because that’s exactly what this is, and I like that. The voice works on top of it, and the Duran Duran vibes are…yeah, I’ll give them that. For what it wants to be doing as a song, it’s fairly good. I do wonder if they’re overhyping the whole project a bit, though, as for all they’re bigging up the video, it’s no more overblown or arty than we’ve seen in previous ones. Hell, compared to Alan Walker’s trilogy opener it’s really rather tame.

Still, listenable track, though.

DAVID44 – Truth

“Nope. Sorry.”

Tim: Another capitalised Scandinavian, and this time we’ve got some numbers thrown in as well for good measure. This is a song I’ve been back and forth about featuring for a week or so now, largely because I’m fairly sure you probably won’t like it. Here it is anyway, though.

Tom: You’re right! Well, not quite. It’s not that I don’t like it, it’s that I find it difficult to have any strong opinion about chilled house like this.

Tim: Right, because it does slot in nicely to the chilled house genre that we’ve debated before, and while I’m not expecting to make you a convert any time soon, I do still want to share it. I’m prepared for a “don’t be ridiculous” here, but it’s not so far removed from the recent Calvin Harris/Sam Smith track Promises – vulnerable male vocal over an understated backing – and for me it works. Any chance for you?

Tom: Nope. Sorry. It’s… well, it’s music.

LÉON – Falling

“Finding out this was a four-minute track did not help my reaction.”

Tim: We’ve never featured LÉON (apparently the capitals are necessary) before, though she’s been going a while.

Tom: If you’re going to have a name that’s all in capitals like that, then in my head it’s going to be SHOUTED every TIME. Anyway, who’s LÉON?

Tim: She’s off Sweden, and her latest is this.

Tim: Want to break up, get back together, need to break up again, rinse and repeat until you get a fairly listenable track from it – a process that’s worked for many other acts, and I’m fairly sure it mostly works here as well, no?

Tom: I mean, it does, but that’s a load-bearing “mostly” in that sentence.

Tim: Well, yeah. Sure, we’ve competent vocals and a strong backing, but it doesn’t half sound a little bit slow, to the extent that even by the three minute mark I was thinking “blimey, are we not done yet?”.

Tom: That kicked in at two minutes thirty for me. Finding out this was a four-minute track did not help my reaction.

Tim: Aside from that, it’s fine: nice to listen to, wouldn’t complain about hearing it. Though I think that there is a textbook example of ‘damning with faint praise’, isn’t it?

Tom: Welcome to the club, Tim.

Penthox – Call Upon

“There’s always something that doesn’t seem right, isn’t there?”

Tim: He’s from Sweden, he’s young-ish (Soundcloud bio says 18, but the account’s been there since 2013, so who knows), and he makes stuff like this, his latest.

Tim: And I like that.

Tom: Huh. I wasn’t expecting to for some reason — it’s probably just my standard unimpressed-by-default — but I perked up at just the intro and verse.

Tim: Admittedly, I don’t really have much to say beyond that, but as a dance track, it pushes all the right buttons. Sometimes – hell, frequently — that’s all I need. A track I like, and can ‘wooooo’ along to when the time comes for it.

Tom: The trouble is, Tim: I don’t like those ‘wooooo’s. The rest isn’t bad at all, particularly that pre-chorus, but… agh, there’s always something that doesn’t seem right, isn’t there?

Tim: Sadly, it seems so.

Galantis – Emoji

“This is a good track apart from the lyrics and the video.”

Tim: Not entirely sure how you’ll feel about this video, Tom (although that might be a lie, because I’m almost certain I know how you’ll feel), but bear in mind it’s only 2 minutes and 48 seconds long.

Tom: This is a good track apart from the lyrics and the video.

Tim: Part of me wants to brush my hands together, smile, turn and walk away and just let you loose on this one with the knowledge that my work here is done, really, but the other part of me wants to argue passionately in favour of this. After all, who doesn’t love the idea of sending a disturbingly anthropomorphised heart to guilt trip your other half into not giving up on you while you’re away, and to grow large and bright when you’re getting ready to see her again? It’s just SO CUTE.

Tom: Mm. I’m not going to rise to the bait, except to say that: songs with references like this date incredibly quickly, and if you have to deliberately mis-emphasise a word to fit the rhyme scheme, perhaps you should just write the song about something else.

Tim: Oh. Can’t deny I’m a tad disappointed, but you’re not wrong.

Saturday Flashback: Polina Gagarina – A Million Voices

“She’s acting well enough to actually make it look like she believes it.”

Tim: So, you know how, on occasion, if you’re out for an evening in a club or wherever, you hear a song that you’ve never heard before, or might have forgotten, and feel it to be absolutely amazing, and then get remarkably obsessed with it over the next few days?

Tom: I remember, many years ago, having that happen for Special D’s Come With Me. 2004, there.

Tim: Ah, what a track that was, and indeed still is. For me, the most recent example is this, which I played a good few dozen times last weekend, after a FABULOUS night out.

Tom: Well, not only is she belting that out with a lot of power, but she’s acting well enough to actually make it look like she believes it. Or, perhaps, she actually does believe it.

Tim: Hmm, she’d be in quite the minority of her compatriots if she did, given the number of rainbow flags flying that evening, but sure, let’s give her the benefit of the doubt – Europe certainly did, with it actually beating Måns’s winner in the televote.

Tom: Side note: does someone fix a light at 2:09 or something, or is that a miscue? I’m fairly sure the backing singers aren’t meant to suddenly be spotlit like that.

Tim: Huh, yes, that is weird. Musically, mind, we could talk about clichés all day long – that ‘hold off on the main drums until she mentions them in the inspirational lyrics’ is as textbook as they come, and absolutely brilliant – but all in all this is a terrific track (with brilliant staging, dodgy lights aside) and as far as a room full of drunk gays in a club in London was concerned, seemingly the best song to have been performed in the world ever. Until the next one came along, anyway.

RaeLynn – Tailgate

“Modern pop-country is basically just schlager with different instrumentation.”

Tom: This is not Europop, Tim. This is as far from Europop as you can get. It’s pop-country. But I’m driving through the US at the moment, and I tuned to a country station, and found that I was smiling at this chorus. The song’s a few months old, but the video is new:

Tim: Oh, that really is a good chorus. Got me swaying and everything.

Tom: And this is why I mention it: I maintain that modern pop-country is basically just schlager with different instrumentation. Here’s why: verse, chorus, verse, chorus, middle eight, chorus, done in just over three minutes. Catchy chorus that you can sing by the end of the first listen. Entirely predictable chord progression.

Tim: Yep – like with the first couple of tracks this week, totally formula, totally well done.

Tom: All it’s missing is a key change.

Alex Weit – By Your Side

“Wow, that starts well.”

Tim: New Swede (well, not new, he’s 20, but new at music anyway).

Tom: “New Swede” is also a good name for a band.

Tim: And this is “a story of two people that really fancy each other, but one of them is scared of love. So they cancel their first date and, instead, they both stay home, fantasising about what could have been if things would have played out differently.” Enjoy.

Tom: Wow, that starts well. That’s such a good intro. I realise I’m talking about three seconds of mostly synth effects there, but still.

Tim: And that is a song with a lot of promise, that’s builds and builds and then just…plateaus. Verses, first two choruses, middle eight, all decent and regular, but then towards the end you’ve just got a repeat of the chorus (admittedly not unheard of, but also not particularly inspiring), and a segue into what’s basically in a TV chat show theme tune.

Tom: Huh. You’re right. A lot of good ingredients, but not quite mixed together right.

Tim: And that’s harsh, but…it’s also true, and I really wish it wasn’t.

Tom: It’s a really, really good TV chat show theme tune though.