halfcactus

Posted by TSJ

https://thesinglesjukebox.com/flummox-siren-shock/

Al brings us some manic metal from Murfreesboro…

[Video]
[7.62]

Nortey Dowuona: me, preparing to write a detailed blurb on an aspect of the song: hmm, i wonder what this will sound like.
me, 2 minutes into the song: yeah, this is great
me, still listening to the song: i should really write that blurb -oh dang, what are they doing with that little bass line near the end!!! that sounds amazing
me, still listening to the song: but seriously…maybe I’ll be able to blurb…after one more listen…
me, preparing to write a detailed blurb on the song: hmm, i wonder what this sounds like…again.
[10]

Claire Davidson: Well, I can confidently say that I’ve never heard anything quite like “Siren Shock,” an already-energetic metal cut that quickly morphs into something more akin to Southern rock, the bluesy snarl of its lead guitar leading the charge in a mix that transforms the song into a rollicking but no less potent experience. That initially imposing approach is a good fit for the track’s lyrics, which detail in very carnal terms the all-encompassing force of a toxic relationship that leaves its narrator alternately mesmerized and depleted, using energy that evokes visceral experiences of touch and smell that stretch far beyond the bounds of one person’s body to convey just how deeply this codependency evokes an inescapable agony. Yet far from being a pessimist, lead vocalist Alyson Blake Dellinger performs these words with an infectious brio, her winking theatricality proving so compelling that I almost wish her voice were more audible, even for as unconventional as that choice would be compared to metal’s standard wall-of-sound approach. That isn’t my only quibble with the production: the hyperactive drum work, too, is actually placed too high in the mix, becoming distracting in its kineticism while still sounding flat-footed. Beyond these stylistic choices, though, the biggest flaw of “Siren Shock” is that, while its swings from lighthearted grooves to a more cavernous, dread-inducing melodic streak actually land pretty seamlessly, Flummox’s attempt to blend the two styles for a chaotic outro leaves the song feeling more cluttered than even a band this skilled can navigate. Still, having never encountered Flummox before, “Siren Shock” definitely has me curious to explore what else they have to offer, if only because I’m fascinated to learn what kind of minds could dream up such eccentric genre fusions.
[7]

Will Adams: It seems like there’s a rousing rock anthem buried in there, but I can’t get past the mixing: muffled, cluttered, doing no favors for Alyson Dellinger’s high-octane performance. That brief electric piano solo feels like a gasp of air.
[5]

Alfred Soto: A sound this fetching would tempt me to add suffixes like “lust-damaged” or “guitar-damaged” but they’re not fair. I hear no damage in “Siren Shock” — I hear joy and anger commingled because that’s the only way they work.
[8]

Andrew Karpan: It’s nice that a song can still evoke the feeling of a weekend night in a wood-paneled dive bar, loud and resistant to artifice.
[7]

Ian Mathers: How does one score a song that does a very good job at things one personally finds deeply unappealing? The most damning thing I can say about Flummox from the perspective of what I, myself, would like to experience can be summed up by this from their Wikipedia page: “the band is also known for their theatrical live shows that incorporate comedic skits, musical improvisation, performance art, and audience participation.” I am glad this sort of thing exists! I would even say I go beyond tolerance about it. I am genuinely into how much fun and skill is on display here and how much people who love it are having a ball. I find myself agreeing with a line from the Bandcamp page for the record this comes from: “Flummox returns in 2025 with their most obnoxious album yet, during a time when we most need them.”
[7]

Claire Biddles: Thrilling to hear so many ideas and flourishes packed into such a short space — when this finished I presumed it had been eight minutes long. Obviously a lot going on but I like it best when it sounds kinda like The Runaways. More prog bands should have swag!
[7]

https://thesinglesjukebox.com/flummox-siren-shock/

Posted by TSJ

https://thesinglesjukebox.com/ghais-guevara-critical-acclaim/

From Nortey, a Philly rapper whose song title delivers on its promise…

[Video]
[7.78]

Al Varela: Starting your song off with a recollection of Diddy’s monstrous behavior and how all he could do in reaction was to “shake his head” really doesn’t prepare you for how much deeper Ghais Guevara will take that guilt and make you live through it. You can tell he’s haunted by the actions of his male peers and how deeply he empathizes with the women whom they traumatize, all delivered through bars that never pull punches set against the murky pianos and muddled atmosphere. For as much as Ghais wants to deconstruct and diminish this performance of masculinity, sometimes it haunts him too and drives him further down the road of paranoia and violence. I can deeply relate to that frustration of seeing these actions and this needless trauma relived over and over again and feeling like you’re trapped and can’t enjoy anything without worrying that it’ll all happen again. You think back to that intro sample and worry about how many Diddys are still in your life.
[9]

Alfred Soto: Is he quoting testimony from the Diddy trial? Does he adapt a verse from Proverbs? Yes and Yes. Moving confidently from bar to bar, Ghais Guevara takes a long look at himself in the mirror, documents what he dislikes, and wonders why he can’t do better: “You just caught a body, but you feel no shame.” Objects of further scorn: Robin Thicke, how patriarchal brawn beat “matrifocal focus” senseless.
[8]

Taylor Alatorre: The verse from Proverbs is cited here less for doctrinal reasons than for the qualities which the word “Biblical” tends to evoke, even in the non-believer — something vast and ancient and all-encompassing, judging us always by an unbending moral standard, invisible yet palpably felt. For Ghais Guevara, the guilt that he feels for his complicity in an abusive scenario exists in the shadow of Scripture, as does his righteous desire to shame and shun those who have violated his and others’ trust. His delivery on “Critical Acclaim” is dictated by this stark seriousness of intent, Robin Thicke pun notwithstanding. Though answering the demands of one’s conscience may not make for a purely entertaining listen, Ghais succeeds fully in convincing the listener that this was an utter necessary song for him to make.
[7]

Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: We do not, as a matter of course, cover very many album tracks from indie label communist rap concept albums, but based on this, maybe we should. It’s easy for this variety of heady classicist rap to get too hauntological for me but even with all the choirs and pianos this doesn’t ever feel more burdened than it has to be.
[8]

Will Adams: The Diddy-referencing intro is intentionally discomforting and sets the stage for Guevara’s reflection on sin and the patriarchal forces that structure his worldview. The simple arrangement — a piano loop and occasional synth wash — give him much needed space, but even then it seems like he has a few too many ideas he’s trying to pack in here.
[6]

Julian Axelrod: It shouldn’t be noteworthy for a rapper to address everything from consent and the patriarchy to the “Blurred Lines” and Diddy trials, but in a decidedly apolitical rap landscape, I’m grateful to the Ghais Guevaras of the world for pulling at these tangled threads. If anything, the song feels overly ambitious, like he tried to cram a year’s worth of news into one song. The ripped-from-the-headlines approach feels less like Ice-T speaking truth to power in the 80’s and more like Ice-T recapping a topical story on Law & Order: SVU. Ghais’s droll drawl and classicist piano production evoke the masked cult hero Mach-Hommy, but this comparison just underlines Hommy’s understated ability to expound on Gaza one moment and call you a meatball the next. But there are far worse rappers to emulate, and I’d much rather hear someone miss this specific mark than clear a low bar.
[6]

Ian Mathers: At first the loop just sounds lovely, kind of laid back, but as soon as Guevera starts going in (and he never really stops until the end) the combination is relentless, vicious. A minor alchemy, and one greater than the sum of its parts.
[9]

Dave Moore: Certainly sounds “critically acclaimed” (not derogatory but not entirely complimentary) but as far as I can tell has been little remarked upon. I never know what to do with thoughtful but plain stuff like this, seems like it’s waiting expectantly for the rest of the world to elevate it to my attention. Glad I heard it, though.
[7]

https://thesinglesjukebox.com/ghais-guevara-critical-acclaim/

Posted by TSJ

https://thesinglesjukebox.com/audrey-hobert-thirst-trap/

https://thesinglesjukebox.com/?p=29584

Joshua Lu’s pick reminds us of that eternal adage: Everything Is Embarrassing.

[Video]
[6.91]

William John: Despite its title, this is ostensibly a song about ennui and disaffection, advancing the idea that thirst traps are usually less about a desire for connection than a hope that a fleeting moment of attention might curtail the boredom of daily life. It’s a pity then that a potentially interesting subject is wasted on such bland sound design: a foamy post-Taylor wash, indistinguishable from that proffered by Hobert’s childhood best friend and collaborator Gracie Abrams, which struggles to promote much enthusiasm.
[5]

Ian Mathers: It’s honestly really strange to me that Hobert’s voice here sounds so much like Gracie Abrams, and less surprising that the songwriting here reminds me of Abrams since Hobert co-wrote the singles I liked from The Story of Us. But! The production is a little more interesting to me than anything I’ve heard from Abrams, the bit in the chorus about thinking pictures of yourself look bad is intensely relatable, and the video is very funny and charming. I don’t think I’ll have trouble telling their voices apart for very long.
[8]

Claire Davidson: My first exposure to Audrey Hobert was hearing “Sue Me” on the radio. While I, like everyone, was shocked at how uncannily similar her vocal cadence and phrasing are to her frequent collaborator Gracie Abrams, the song’s pummelingly simple synth melody remained such a potent earworm that I grew to appreciate Hobert’s humor in spite of myself. (The off-the-wall video, if nothing else, makes as good a case for her artistry as any.) Where Abrams’s mopey frustrations typically read as pessimistic, Hobert possesses a playful exuberance that lends her self-deprecation a refreshing degree of levity, an approach that, coupled with the surprising cleverness of her solo material, makes her a stealthily compelling pop presence. “Thirst Trap” doesn’t quite have the blunt immediacy of “Sue Me,” nor the wiry color, instead anchoring its verses to an acoustic guitar jangle that evaporates by the time the chorus arrives. This, in turn, forces Hobert’s wispier tone to compete with mounting percussion and little else, a poor choice for a singer who already doesn’t command much body in the mix. Still, there aren’t many pop songs predicated on the idea that having a crush makes you a less interesting person, and Hobert’s mournful depiction of the person she becomes when monomaniacally fixated on a guy is funny enough in conceit alone to make up for the track’s more anodyne background. If anything, given Hobert’s lamentation of how “vacant” she now is, that blandness seems to be part of the point.
[6]

Will Adams: The production is nice — the tumbling drums and late-game sax solo evoke the sparkle of E•MO•TION. And while it’s a relatable tale of feeling past one’s prime as far as being hip and happening, Hobert’s overstuffed lyric style means an increased risk of some real clunkers, like “I used to be so super cool / now I’m in the box with all the tools.”
[5]

Katherine St. Asaph: An interestingly brash sax solo that you have to slog through less interesting Abrams-isms to reach.
[6]

Nortey Dowuona: The cascading drums played by Miles Morris feel like they should be hammering, shuddering as they stomp out of your speakers. Instead they feel like a collapse of the pattern into a heavy handed snar,e and I can only ask so much of the mixer, Jon Castelli. With Bad Suns, Morris’s drums sound crisp, full and lovely, filling their place as the bedrock of the mix, somehow becoming a propulsive force allowing the melodies to coalesce and cohere. Not so much here. I returned to “Thirst Trap” to listen more intently, and much to my horror, the drums were still over-compressed, the only distinct sound they could make being the THWACK of the snare, preventing the diving rumble of the toms and the heavy, lumbering swing of the kick from settling into a groove or even swinging the bassline or topline melody into a stranger, bolder frame, wasting a good drum pattern played by Morris; or worse, trying and failing to assemble a listenable drum arrangement out of very poorly tracked takes from Pièce Eatah, who seemed to also be off his game. Thank goodness Audrey isn’t.
[6]

Julian Axelrod: On paper, Audrey Hobert represents everything I was sick of talking about this year: nepo babies, relatability, Gracie Abrams, etc. But then I finally checked out Who’s the Clown? and had the experience every pop album aspires to deliver, in which each song hits on first listen before burrowing into your subconscious and emerging as a sleeper favorite in the subsequent weeks and months. At the risk of invoking another insufferable 2025 conversation, “Thirst Trap” is peak coworker music — not only in its broad appeal, but in Hobert’s ability to make every hilarious couplet feel like a whispered confession on a smoke break from the coolest girl you work with at Panera. She’s so good at blowing up minor everyday grievances (in this case, the all-consuming tunnel vision of a new crush) into miserably relatable widescreen epics. If you’ve ever had to delete 100 terrible nudes to free up space on your camera roll, this one’s for you.
[8]

Andrew Karpan: Sure, the Audrey Hobert song solves a certain problem with the Taylor Swift record, as a kind of hip object of aspirational poptimist universality, but in order to tell you what that problem is, I’d have to take one of those college courses on Swiftology and I can’t take out more loans, okay?
[7]

Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: Doing pop star linear algebra to figure out that Gracie Abrams-without-Gracie Abrams is worth about 4 additional points on balance; I like other songs off this album better but this one benefits from the clarity of purpose with which Hobert says something as dumb as “420 Blaze It.”
[7]

Taylor Alatorre: Audrey Hobert writes and sings as if it’s impossible for members of her generation to ever have an unmediated experience of reality, which is not yet completely true but is an artistically compelling problem to labor under. “I listen to my playlists and pretend I’m you” is a short story premise packed into a few cartwheeling syllables, felt by the listener as another punchy data point in a cascade of curated vulnerability. And good luck trying to figure out whether she ever really was or thought of herself as “super cool”; she’s hiding behind seven proxies of herself. The biggest irony is that this performance of a frazzled and fractured identity is wedded to a structure of pristine pop formalism which lays bare Hobert’s trueest persona of all: the one who’s most put-together when articulating just how un-put-together she is. The belated sax solo is the final joke that this self-styled clown plays on herself, a sweet treat of catharsis which she knows her bedroom-pacing self has done nothing at all to deserve today. It tastes that much sweeter because of it.
[9]

https://thesinglesjukebox.com/audrey-hobert-thirst-trap/

https://thesinglesjukebox.com/?p=29584

Posted by TSJ

https://thesinglesjukebox.com/jim-legxacy-06-wayne-rooney/

https://thesinglesjukebox.com/?p=29577

We began Amnesty 2025 by going back to 2005. To kick off Week 2, Jacob has us going back to 2006…

[Video]
[7.58]

Al Varela: Just when I thought I knew what to expect from Black British Music (2025), I’m struck with a pop-rock inspired beat with crisp drums and jittery guitars, on top of whizzy synths and a melodic “heya heyaaa” swiftly flying over it all. One hell of a pleasant surprise!
[9]

Julian Axelrod: Black British Music (2025) is a hilariously nondescript title for such an ambitious album, but it also captures Jim Legxacy’s ability to meld any and every genre into a sound that’s unmistakably him. Nestled between Spanish guitar ballads, grime bangers and trap abstractions is “’06 Wayne Rooney,” a yearning new wave rager that retells Jim’s tumultuous upbringing through a series of haikus from rock bottom. The chorus is a red herring; the motivating question isn’t “How’d I get here?” but “What do I do now?” Heard through this context, you can’t blame him for wanting to explore every possible option at once, often in a single song. But rather than feeling overstuffed, “’06 Wayne Rooney” offers the sleekest possible version of a pop anthem, all rounded edges and naked emotion. I’d be tempted to compare him to another genre-defying Black genius who blew up singing “hey ya” if he hadn’t already beat me to it.
[8]

Will Adams: Flipping the title hook from a song most commonly associated now with wedding dancefloors into an existential cry is inspired, and it forms the emotional anchor of “’06 Wayne Rooney”‘s chorus. The verses provide the set-up: in recounting his troubled youth, there’s little else for Jim to say except “how’d I get here?”
[8]

Andrew Karpan: Hearing the energetic phraseology of “Hey Ya!” in a clipped, melancholy British accent already reminded me of what a British professor once told me was called “transatlantic modernism,” and this was even before Mr. Legxacy said it best himself when he announced to the NYT that he was crafting a futuristic version for the present based on what has existed in the past. Call it reverse-hauntology, call it getting out of the grave & put on your red shoes and dance the blues..
[8]

William John: The verses, though written perhaps more elegiacally, are backed by the type of unremarkable guitar line favoured by the likes of, say, the Kid LAROI. The chorus, by contrast, is all repetition, but its liveliness serves as an effective contrast to the dolour of what precedes it. It’s enough to make you want to reach your hand out and help Jim Legxacy out of his statis and away from further emotional unravelling.
[7]

Nortey Dowuona: The drum programming from J Moon is a welcome surprise. It’s simple yet bouncy, despite the final snare roll threatening rhythmic simplicity. It’s easy to focus on Legxacy, since the drums lock into a smooth, easy to dismiss rhythm, it surprisingly doesn’t fade from you mind, becoming a prominent stride below the well arranged guitar chords and subtle, swirling bass, easily remaining a direct loping cadence that once it shifts into a snare run still keeps your ear on it, no matter how stiff it may sound. A stiffness not present in a better rock record with a black singer.
[8]

Claire Biddles: Didn’t expect this to be so Kerrang! TV coded (song not video) (highly complimentary)
[7]

Taylor Alatorre: There’s a tension between the pulsing immediacy of the pop punk backing track and the smeared-out reverb effects applied to Jim Legxacy’s voice. It’s a productive tension, serving as a symbol of the impassable distances created by time, of the humbling divergence between those soaring childhood dreams and sordid adult realities. But it’s productive of a distance in the listener’s mind as well, working in concert with the song’s title and the “Hey Ya!” interpolation to have us gazing glossily into an unreachable past instead of addressing the chorus’s central question, one that extends into the vital present: “How’d I get here?” What I’m saying is this would have gone even harder if Legxacy had sung like he was, in that moment, auditioning for a 2000s FIFA soundtrack.
[7]

Jel Bugle: Important to note that Wayne Rooney’s best goal scoring seasons were actually 2009/10 and 2011/12. This was all right.
[6]

Scott Mildenhall: If going months without scoring, fracturing a metatarsal and trying to neuter Ricardo Carvalho are Jim Legxacy’s intended parallels, they’re about right. Early Rooney seemed powered by frustration; always escaping some kind of trap, if not with such obvious melancholy. That has clear musical appeal, but this doesn’t take it far enough. While it rattles along agreeably, it leaves far less impression than its lovingly crafted video. If anything, it’s more like ’25 Wayne Rooney: half-formed thoughts given undue import.
[6]

Ian Mathers: What a perfectly lovely, vaguely pop-punk-y, little tune that just happens to be wrestling with some serious personal and societal demons. A surprisingly effective combo, it turns out.
[7]

https://thesinglesjukebox.com/jim-legxacy-06-wayne-rooney/

https://thesinglesjukebox.com/?p=29577