All Of The Champagne In California

Yas Reven “WHoO-Oo!”

I like when dance music feels like a producer is playing a little game with you, one where they’re always a few steps ahead of you. “WHoO-Oo!” is one of those, a song that starts out feeling like you’re being led through some kind of funky maze and before you know it the maze feels more like a rollercoaster. Yas Reven keeps the whole thing feeling light and bouncy while carefully managing the big dopamine blast moments, and amps up the playfulness by cutting in vocal parts that sound like the utterances of a happy digital baby.

Buy it from Bandcamp.

Ariana Grande “Ordinary Things”

I can’t tell whether the new Ariana Grande record Eternal Sunshine is her pushing a fading Max Martin out of his comfort zone as a musician, or if it’s more like Martin trying to get her type of floaty R&B music into his comfort zone and mostly not getting there. For the most part the songs don’t give me what I like about her music, and they don’t really provide any of his core competencies as the master of Too Big To Fail chart pop either. So it’s no big surprise that the only song on the record I love without reservation is “Ordinary Things,” one of two tracks without a Martin writing credit. This is the kind of Ariana song I like the most – an airy feel, a busy yet nimble melody, low-key sensuality, and the general sensation of getting a contact high off of someone else’s intense infatuation. This is never the sort of song she releases as a single but it’s the thing she’s best at doing, and it’s something that’s simply outside of Martin’s skill set. They aim for this lightness on some other songs on the record but his pop guy mindset resists grace in favor of sledgehammer hooks that distrust an audience’s patience and sensitivity. It just ends up sounding clumsy to me. I’m just glad he didn’t stomp all over this song’s sweet and delicate charms.

Buy it from Amazon.