“Smile” by Gorgon City
MG:
I was reading an interview with a producer yesterday and he mentioned being influenced by the stereo surround vocals of the 80s, where singers like Phil Collins or Peter Gabriel would sound “miles away” from the music. I like those vocals, too, but I’d never considered that’s why they sound so good. Gorgon City employ a similarly 80s atmospheric vocal technique on “Smile,” but theirs is borrowed from post punk bands like Joy Division and New Order. It’s a case of strange bedfellows – the glossiness of EDM with the degraded tape of an art school project. But it really works, the production is charged and dramatic (with more than a touch of Phil Collins in its arrangement) while the vocal sounds distant and cold. It’s autumnal, a cold morning, streets lined with natural decay. Gorgon City feel like close competitors to The Chainsmokers, except Gorgon City don’t have any hits in 2016.
DV:
The Chainsmokers comparison is an instructive one for a simple reason: Gorgon City don’t have the hooks to measure up. “Smile” is interesting from a production standpoint, I agree. But its weakest point is the one it most needs to land, the prechorus and the hook itself. The Chainsmokers have consistently nailed this moment: even when the verses are weak, songs like “Closer” have pre-choruses that hit as hard as choruses and hooks that feel like pure elation. In part because of the vocal treatment, the prechorus to “Smile” sounds asthmatic; worse still is the instrumental hook, which - whooshes aside - bounces along as languidly as what’s preceded it. Gorgon City have proven they know the gestures that go into hit dance tracks in 2016 - using those whooshes as structural cues, letting the vocals take a break for the hook itself, building something like a narrative in the verses and relying on the chorus for uncomplicated and unrelated catharsis. They just don’t seem to have figured out how to build a compelling song out of all those familiar pieces.