Tracks of the week reviewed: Tinashe, Ne-Yo, Factory Floor

Tinashe ft Future
Faded Love

Pity the female R&B singer who just wants to have fun but has a dude air-dropped into her song for purposes of “relatability”. Tinashe’s vibed-out new single has her leading a conquest to the threshold of the club, dispensing with details in the name of getting hers. Future’s icky verse – “I’ma find your G-spot like you dropped your location” – nearly wrecks the no-questions-asked mood, but Tinashe’s cooed come-ons swoop back just in time.

Ne-Yo
Good Man

On a scale of one to Diddy, Ne-Yo’s sampling of D’Angelo’s Untitled (How Does It Feel) for the backbone of Good Man falls somewhere in the middle – D’s funk is pitch-shifted enough to not seem too obvious, yet to make one wonder why bother. At least the pledges of loyalty are sincere, with Ne-Yo even going so far as to claim a willingness to put Obama on hold in order to take a call from his intended. Cute.

Factory Floor
Heart of Data

Last year the Science Museum commissioned professional noise merchants Factory Floor to come up with a score for Fritz Lang’s dystopian classic Metropolis; this blippy, pulsing track from the score blooms from motorik grooves into frantic cymbal crashes and wavy synths, providing a new complement to Lang’s future that communicates urgency through the tension between the spiky and the smoothed-out.

Jesse Saint John
Move

This California-based songwriter (he’s penned bangers for the likes of Charli XCX and Britney Spears) claims to have “grown up on” bloghouse, the late-00s dance music wave that combined electro’s party atmosphere and indie’s arch worldview into brash, hooky anthems. Move brings that kitchen-sink spirit into the late-10s: its verses’ spindly bassline anchors processed-cheese-vocal bursts and Saint John’s singsong plaint about a narcissistic lover before exploding into the chorus, in which Saint John lets loose an ecstatic bellow.

Tracey Thorn ft Corinne Bailey Rae
Sister

“Don’t mess with me,” Tracey Thorn warns at the outset of Sister, a nervy declaration of womanhood that looks back at the past in order to summon strength to deal with the present. Thorn’s lush vocal transforms the world-weary lyric “Oh what year is it/ Still arguing the same shit” into a steely-eyed rallying cry, while the post-punky spinout of the coda indicates light on the other side of the muck.