Tag: Matilda Thompson

Matilda Thompson – Elysium

“There is a wonderful place out there where everything will be lovely”

Tim: It’s been eighteen months, but we’ve finally got a second track from Matilda, and is exactly as happy and pleasant as the title would suggest.

Tom: It’s a bold choice to go with that vague “hey-a” sample any time after Enya, but hey, it seems to work. Happy and pleasant, though?

Tim: Well, kind of – it’s at least somewhat upward looking with it’s sense of maybe possibly this relationship could improve a bit, but the music at least is something I could listen to over and over again. Sure, it took a verse or so to actually get anywhere, but once it’s there it just keeps going, and by the end you genuinely are left with a true sense of optimism.

Tom: That is a good chorus, and that beat — I think it’s almost swing-time, or at least something close? — is something you don’t often hear in pop music. It works, although I’m not sure about that true sense of optimism: perhaps that’s from the absolutely gorgeous location she’s standing in the video, rather than the music itself. What do you get from it?

Tim: Overall? A feeling that yes, there is a wonderful place out there where everything will be lovely, and that we can all head there, and just hope this this time it isn’t underneath a carpark.

Tom: Callback humour. Nice.

Matilda Thompson – What We Do

“How We Do”.

Tim: Prediction: you’ll find the opening couple of lines a bit harsh, and like the rest of it.

Tim: Well, that’s what I did.

Tom: Yep, that introduction is worryingly Cher Lloyd-like. Fortunately, it swung away from that quickly.

Tim: This is Matilda, a Dane who musically first appeared in public in 2002; she was 12 and part of a group competing to represent Denmark at Eurovision that year. They didn’t, but they kept going anyway, and oh, there’s a whole load of tedious biography on her slightly outdated website if you want it. According to that, she is “primed for global exposure in 2012”, and is “about to be unleashed.” So that’s good.

Tom: I know how difficult it is to keep a web site up to date, but two years? That’s impressive.

Tim: Like I said earlier, I wasn’t entirely sold on the first few lines, as there wasn’t much of a melody and only a hard repetitive synth in the backing; come the second half of the verse when the singing picks up a bit, and then the chorus where everything kicks off, it’s all sorts of brilliant, really.

Tom: Yes. But I think that’s mainly because it’s Rita Ora’s How We Do.

Tim: Oh. Ohh…

Tom: I mean, the instrumentation’s about the same, the melody’s close, the vocal style is remarkably similar, and there’s that “cos when” and “we do, do, do” echoing. Granted, it doesn’t have the “party and bullshit” chant, but it’s pretty much the same track aside from that.

Tim: Yes, it is a bit similar isn’t it. Oh well, let’s ignore that. We’ve a hugely upbeat chorus, a decent hook and a song nicely targeted at people who just want to have fun, party all night, and stay, well, forever young, as the lyrics say. And who doesn’t?