Chris Ingalls: When you want fans to remember your name, changing it from Laurel Sprengelmeyer to Little Scream seems like the right move. “Kiss”-era Prince updated for the 21st century, complete with buzzing synths, a sparse beat and a semi-spoken middle part, this is the kind of song that blasts from the speakers just as the party hits a lull, and suddenly everyone’s dancing again. A bright, shiny jolt of dance-pop heaven. [8/10]
Emmanuel Elone: Little Scream’s first song under Merge Records is quite a good listen. Little Scream’s soprano vocals contrast well with the punchy electric guitar riff, and the percussion works with bass and guitar to make a tight groove. The lyrics are pretty good as well, and the chorus is near perfect for a pop song, with a catchy yet singable hook. Where “Love As a Weapon” loses me is during the breakdown and ending, which feel unnecessary and out of place when compared to the first half of the song. It also makes the track longer, even though the song would sound best if it closed at around the three minute mark. Still, “Love As a Weapon” has more great things going for it than bad, and serves as a great teaser for Little Scream’s upcoming album. [7/10]
Steve Horowitz: This space-age electronic song begs like a puppy for positive attention. Sometimes just being affectionate is just not enough. The song offers layers to get lost in, but one wishes it offered more direction. The music moves mindlessly to nowhere. The video shows the importance of posing but not the purpose. [4/10]
Pryor Stroud: Bowie famously labeled the art-theater R&B sound from his 1975 album Young Americans as “plastic soul”, defining it as “the squashed remains of ethnic music as it survives in the age of Muzak rock, written and sung by a white limey”. But that is a definition of deliberate ambiguity: what do we make of these remains? Do we lend this made-of-wreckage aesthetic the same sort of credibility that we would to soul music as such? In what way, if in any way at all, does this genre-distortion tap into the spiritus mundi that its forebear channeled so well? “Love As a Weapon”, the latest single from Canadian singer-songwriter Little Scream, doesn’t answer these questions, but it engages with them with the same level of panache that the best tracks from Young Americans did; it’s a “plastic soul” track through-and-through, impassioned yet detached, pained yet danceable, and Little Scream’s coy vocal musing seems to know something that the Sunshine-Band-disco instrumentation behind it knows nothing about. [7/10]
Chad Miller: There’s a pretty good funk feel in this song as Sprengelmeyer glides across a dance floor with her soulful falsetto (it’s probably her head voice actually but oh well). However, it does grow a little tiresome after a while as we don’t get much contrast early on. The synth section really helps the track finish strongly though, and there are a few interesting lyrics as well like “Just remember your greatest gift is to dance”. It sounds both manipulative and self-depreciating. The complexity is a nice touch, saving the song from being a straight narrative. [7/10]
Little Scream‘s new album Cult Following releases 6 May 2016 via Merge Records.
SCORE: 6.60