If I actually cared about M.I.A., I’d give her a piece of advice: take it from M.I.A., if you want to get your record into the hands of people it’s a whole lot easier if you just do it yourself. But the only M.I.A. I care about is putting out records and on this, her newest 12″, she gets more full-bodied than previous efforts, but no less melodic. The beats are, typically, are bit more simple than her contemporaries attention to sonic minutiae, but the substitute is a more careful attention to emotional timbres. This is the case on “Sweet November,” which revives the same synth that launched a thousand ships on “River,” making it a perfect mid-set comedown track. “Change” and “Morning Frost” both have deeper bass hits than you might expect, but offset with a healthy dose of three- and four-note melodies, the latter secretly getting in some C3PO samples underneath the radar.

Substatic / sus_43
[Todd Burns]