The Magic Numbers - 'Love Me Like You' (Heavenly)
4/5
By: Michael Lewin
The Magic Numbers are like wholesome, clean, fresh air. Only, I'm a chain smoker, see?
By the time this level of success has been achieved by a band, and even if TMN have achieved it unfeasibly quickly, appearing fully formed from the depths of London, reviews of their latest output are likely to take one of two preformed stances: either the weight of publicity or joy in music will demand a comment that they should be hated, but, oh, the band are just too good, or the review will form a scathing, cynical backlash at a rather personal and unpleasant level. Neither agenda will be found here; I merely come with a slight bias: every time I've even looked at the CD to start reviewing this, that damn chorus lodges itself in my head for a week. I'm rather angry about it.
You know what the Numbers sound like; chances are you're probably already familiar with the single. Buttery West Coast pop that consistently fails to cross the line into a world of marshmallows, rabbits and pictures of the sun with a straw hat and a smiley face, much to my lasting chagrin and respect. Leave the song for a few hours, even glance at its title, and all that will remain is that simple refrain repeating itself over, and over, until only a masochistic dose of Merzbow can cure it. There lies my preformed ire: the chorus taken alone is as pointlessly, whimsically sweet as sugar coated in pink sugar. With prolonged exposure to it alone, all that is left is a combination of a desire to shave the entire band, and a desperate need to demand of them: what kind of childhood did you people have? Have you not even seen a Shelter advertisement, let alone grown to learn the true brutality of man's very soul, his nature, been told of famine, disease, war? Were your younger days spent as sunflowers?
Then, out of spite, the desire grows to listen to the song all the way through, to really destroy the damn thing in a review of bitter, scathing angst, and, when you do, you realise that, yes, maybe they do know about all those things. It doesn't really matter, actually. You listen again, and you let yourself fall in love just one more time. And you end up listening to it twenty times in a row, and it doesn't lose any charm. There are no gimmicks to grow weary of, no moments of euphoria that slowly lose their effect the more you expose yourself to them. Simple and appealing, the constant jangle of guitar, tempered ebullience in the country drumming, the occasional perfectly timed flourish of harmony and sudden, childlike bass jitters, those little additions common enough to feel neither desperate nor sickly. Tentative, but only in the most assured of ways: they're quite happy, as long as you are too. And, with a breath-takingly gentle and soft build up to the last chorus, with it's escalating, fragile refrain of "don't fail me now", adds just a hint of variation that probably isn't even necessary. But you're glad it's there, anyway.
So, now that I haven't listened to it for a day, all I'm left with is that damn chorus again. I'm still pretty angry about it. But despite it all, I keep on sucking down lungful after lungful of wholesome, clean, fresh air. I feel like a walk in the country. I might even give up smoking.
Artists in this article: The Magic Numbers
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