I sometimes think that pop music has lost its way, bowing down to the lowest common denominator whims of fickle fashion and fleeting fads. Then something like Shobsy lands in the review pile, and I’m reminded that pop music, for want of a better term, can be every bit as finessed and fabulous, smart and sophisticated as any other genre.
If his last single, “Champagne,” vibed on the side of a sort of dream-pop-disco sound, “Hold Me Up” is the sound of pop heading into a strange post-punk/pre-New Romantic clubland beast. And making up such outlandish genres is proof that something fairly original is going on here, something that doesn’t fit neatly into existing demarcations.
What does that mean? Well, it means that drop the needle on the record, as we used to say, and you find yourself on a roller coaster ride of euphoric dancefloor grooves, pop dynamics that wander between the infectious and the ethereal, the sonically wicked and the lyrically beatific.
It’s a prayer, a plea to whatever higher power or unseen hand guides our lives—God, fate, destiny, luck—for help in these difficult times, a call for guidance, a seeking of redemption, a light to helps navigate the dark. And as the world does indeed get darker, tougher, and less empathetic, we could all use a prayer like that.
It’s a song simultaneously grounded in reality and seeking an audience with God, a song that turns the simple act of pursuing a good time, having a dance, and abandoning yourself to the beat into an act of communion. Divine music, indeed.
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